News Detail

Patrick Yego February 14, 2019

ELECTION OF THE ECDE COMMITTEE MEMBERS IN LINE WITH NEW CONSTRUCTION POLICY

The County Government of Nandi has been championing for development in all parts of the county to see that all the projects that were started are fast-tracked by the departments and their benefits felt by the residents.

The construction of ECDE centres across the county is one of the projects done by the county government through the Department of Education and Vocational Training under the Labour based policy.

So far construction of 60 ECDE centres is ongoing across the 30 wards some of which are complete.

Each ECDE centre consists of 2 classrooms, a reception, a care-giver office and a storage room.

In order to ensure smooth running and easy management of resources, the Department of Education and Vocational Training has shifted from labour based policy to using development committee.

The Department has embarked on an exercise to elect the committee to oversee the construction of ECDE centres for the financial year 2018/2019.

The policy is the diversion from the current labour based which was a pilot project for constructing of 2 ECDE Centres in each of the 30 wards in the county. The program has had numerous challenges hence need for the new policy.

The new policy empowers the local school management to utilize the funds allocated. It requires that the school allocated funds shall have a seven-member committee which include school head-teacher, BOM chairperson, ECDE teacher, a representative of the ECDE parents, representative of sponsoring body if any, representative of the person living with disability and gender representative. The seven shall be the fund committee members.

The policy is envisioned to fasten the construction works through community involvement.The role of the department will be conducting regular inspections through monitoring and evaluation team involving the department of public works.

In a statement by the CECM Valentine Chumo, the construction of ECDE centres can be well managed if the community takes charge of every activity including managing of financial resources.

“We have had challenges before using the labour-based policy and as the department we felt that the work is being slowed down and therefore it is important to let the local community own this project and for a fact, it will not be easy to let down what you own. We let them sit down elect their officials who they trust to manage the project,” she said.

The CECM added that the new policy will be bound to maximum accountability and transparency and the outcome of the efforts shall be a direct benefit to the community.

Mr Benson Savala, one of the elected members appreciated the county for considering their school since it has a good number of pupils.

“First of all we are glad that our school was considered. We have so many schools in this ward alone but ours was chosen; we are very lucky. I will rally people to support government projects to ensure that they are completed within stipulated time,” he said.

The election which took place in 2 ECDE centres in every ward identified through a public participation exercise was overseen by the Sub County administrators of the respective sub counties assisted by the ward administrators where the participants were the ECDE parents.

The school shall be required to open a bank account with the head teacher of the mother school, BOM chair and the ECDE teacher being the signatories. The fund committee members elected shall be inducted before the fund is wired into the account of the school.

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