A big number of children in West Pokot County are estimated to be out of school, with the State Department for Children Services having moved in, to ensure all children get a formal education.
Speaking during a child protection network meeting held at Kalya Hotel in West Pokot County, West Pokot Director of Children Services, Mr. Philip Wapopa, said the Department had moved in to ensure 8,000 children were enrolled back to school.
“Our findings in the past had established that an estimated 40,000 children in West Pokot were out of school because of various factors. This prompted us to move in and we managed to get about 8,000 of them back to school,” said Wapopa.
He said the Directorate of Children Services, which is now elevated to a full department, currently headed by a Permanent Secretary and given additional functions, including family affairs and ensuring that all school-aged children are enrolled and attending school, has brought together various sectors to ensure that all children get to school, so that their rights are not violated.
The meeting was held in collaboration with the office of the County Commissioner and various organizations involved in child protection service delivery, to the children within the County.
He pinpointed that most areas affected included areas within the North of the County such as Alale and Endough wards, where education is still neglected.
Wapopa also cited the emergence of street children, vowing to get them reintegrated back into their families or communities and not taken to children’s homes as the practice has been.
“The main objective of this meeting is to come up with a comprehensive roadmap to facilitate children of school-going age get reintegrated into their families and educational system,” stated Wapopa.
During the one-day forum, Teresia Cheptoo from World Vision said her Organisation was proud to join the government in ensuring that the rights of children are given priority.
Cheptoo said it was everyone’s responsibility to ensure children’s affairs are prioritised, citing early marriages as a major challenge within the County.
“Our mini-researches have established that early marriages stand at above 76 percent in some marginalised areas of the County, such as Alale. Some children also abandon school and migrate to the neighbouring country Uganda, to graze their livestock,” stated Cheptoo.
She said World Vision was working closely with both the Kenyan and Ugandan governments to ensure the children are repatriated to the country, so that they go back to school.
John Barasa from Ampath Uzima reiterated that his Organisation works together with the Ministry of Health, to ensure people get informed about HIV/AIDs through prevention, testing and taking drugs for those positive, so that they lead normal lives.
Barasa said that an HIV Profile report released in 2023, showed that about 4,300 people within the County were living with HIV/AIDs, among them around 200 children born with the disease.
He said the prevalence rate stood at 0.7percent, with women leading at 0.9percent and men at 0.4 percent as West Pokot Sub-County leading in the statistics.
“Patients have volunteered and they are doing well. The challenge is that some start and stop, based on reasons such as distance to health facilities, which is very dangerous because the interrupters in treatment make the virus resistant to other drugs,” explained Barasa.
He added that some patients were still struggling with stigma, causing them to abandon the treatment for fear of victimisation.
By Richard Muhambe and Athony Melly
