Day: March 2, 2024

Rachuonyo South Sub County Children Officer Brian Saidi, seated in a quiet office nestled in a serene and leafy compound at the Sub County headquarter, Kosele, unravels the layers of child neglect in the region.

With years of experience as a frontline advocate of child issues, Saidi shares with KNA insights into the prevalent issues facing children in the area, the most common being child neglect and the remedial measures being undertaken by government.

‘Neglect is often a silent crisis, affecting children’s well-being in profound ways,’ he observes adding, ‘Our mission is to bring these issues to light and work collaboratively to create a safer environment for every child,’ Saidi pointed out.

Saidi whose office has become a solemn space where stories of struggle and resilience among neglected children emerge, explains child neglect as violations of a child’s basic rights, a denial of the love, care and support that every child deserves.

The officer however said there were various ways through which the o
ffice tries to correct the situation.

For instance, where a parent or both parents have been reported for neglect at the Children’s offices, Saidi said the accused parent(s) is summoned and if the summon is responded to, then the accused are advised accordingly where the parties involved make a mutual agreement on the way forward concerning the welfare of their children.

‘If the summonses are not responded to, then the office sends a rejoinder summon reminding the accused to follow instructions as requested,’ he said.

In case of where both the primary summon and the rejoinder are not responded to, the accused parent is then referred to the police or court where an arrest warrant will be issued against the parent(s) and a case file for neglect opened, he explained.

However, the officer said in finding a long term solution with child neglect, the Children’s office conducts workshops that equip parents with essential parenting skills.

He said by addressing the root causes of neglect and providing tools for
effective caregiving, they empower parents to create a nurturing environment for their children.

‘Child neglect is a crisis usually caused by poverty, disputes between partners and also societal pressures which affect a child’s physical, emotional and psychological well-being,’ Saidi said.

To address issues of poverty, the officer said they emphasize the need for long-term empowerment strategies like fostering economic opportunities, healthcare access, and community development.

Saidi says addressing the broader socio-economic factors contributing to neglect would reduce cases of child neglect reported almost daily in the sub county thus becoming a burden even to the government.

‘Apart from workshops, we utilize online platforms to disseminate information, provide resources, and encourage dialogue among community members. This digital approach helps bridge gaps and ensures that even remote areas have access to crucial information and support,’ he said.

Also, the Children Officer said, as an office, they
focus on improving access to quality education for every child in the subcounty by providing education scholarships, after-school programmes, and mentorship opportunities for children to thrive academically, reducing vulnerability to neglect and opening doors to a brighter future.

‘Our aim is to inspire continuous collaboration, innovation, and creating a safe, nurturing environment for every child in the sub county,’ he said.

Source: Kenya News Agency

Pottery is one of the oldest forms of art that gained a lot of popularity around the world and is greatly attributed to helping mankind solve some of the challenges he faced.

In the new millennium, pottery has been viewed merely as a decorative art for improving scenery and aesthetics as opposed to helping address and solve some of the challenges the human race is currently facing. For instance it can be an undisputable answer to climate change, pollution, and lifestyle diseases.

For many years, pottery has been a process and the product of developing vessels and other objects with the use of clay and other raw materials that consisted of functional vessels, such as plates and bowls as well as decorative pieces like tableware, decorative items, and sanitary wares.

With the changing technologies and innovations, the world has been fast-moving from traditional earthenware to metallic and plastic products that have greatly contributed to world pollution and climate change.

According to Ms. Robbie Felix, a pe
rmaculturist and Founder President of Planeta Sano, ceramics or pottery are forms of earthenware that have been used since the inception of the art to conserve our environment.

Felix, a Costa Rican native says that the wrong modern mentality that everything should be disposable is what is ailing the world; creating human-made calamities like pollution and climate change.

The Planeta Sano organisation has been supporting women and youth groups in Kenya and Uganda in permaculture activities to enable them to safeguard their local environment as well as embrace traditional methods of agriculture for healthier living.

In Kenya, the organisation has been helping women groups like the ‘Rongo Women Permaculture’ to make pottery for economic development as well as a form of sustaining environmentally friendly surroundings.

In the twenty-first century, most traditional pottery craftsmen and women numbers have been diminishing and the few that have been left can only be found in remote villages across Africa. Felix
says that it is important to pass the craftsmanship knowledge to the future generation on the importance of pottery in conserving our already polluted environment.

She pointed out that in Africa there is a high pool of educated youth that only requires minimum training to help them work in the sectors of agriculture and pottery to generate income.

Damaris Anyago, one of the members of Rongo Women Permaculture group disclosed that by embracing permaculture, the community can benefit from the health benefits and environmental conservation that pottery offers.

The usage of clay pots, for example, to cook meals makes it appealing, softens the food, and adds nutrients like potassium to food which dissolves during the cooking process.

Potassium, one of the minerals found in clay soil, has been known to play very important functions in the human body like allowing the nerves to respond to stimulation and muscles to contract and tighten as well as reducing the effect of sodium (present in table salt) on blood pre
ssure. The mineral has also been attributed to helping to move nutrients into body cells and waste products out of the cells.

Anyago says that the group makes an average of Sh2,000 daily through the sale of pots, a sign that the Migori community has started to appreciate the forgotten artistic lifestyle.

She acknowledges that with the introduction of modern technologies in kitchen wares like metallic pans and plastic utensils, the population abandoned pottery saying that they were heavy, bulky, and difficult to use.

But modern technologies have brought a lot of problems like soil, water, and air pollution, contributed to lifestyle diseases like cancer, destroyed our environment, and brought climate change.

Her encouragement to the public is that they should embrace the usage of clay pots which have been known to be very sustainable and environmentally friendly items as opposed to plastics and metallic products.

‘We are using the metallic sufurias that are usually cleaned with steel wool, and if not clean
ed properly the iron residues can cause health problems if consumed,’ elaborated Anyango.

Meanwhile, the Director and Founder of Sustainable Village Resources, Caleb Omolo, said that they have been working with women and youth enterprises in the country to sensitise and train them on the importance of embracing permaculture and pottery.

Permaculture refers to the development of agricultural ecosystems that embrace a traditional approach to agriculture to create sustainable and self-sufficient food production.

Omolo explained that the aspect of permaculture is bound by three fundamental principles of caring for the earth, caring for the people, and caring for the future.

The practice integrates knowledge and practices from the best traditional cultures like pottery and natural agricultural practices like crop rotation by linking them to solutions to meet human needs while ensuring a robust future.

Omolo acknowledged that the organisation will continue to train and equip the youth with permaculture skills
to help them employ structural thinking, patterns, relationships, and flows to enable them to link solutions together into synergistic plans that work with nature to fit their local conditions.

He noted that by embracing permaculture in our society we can generate plenty of healthy things, share them justly, and limit overconsumption to benefit the whole society.

‘We want to improve the healthy living of our people, conserve our environment, and improve our traditional modes of agriculture to reduce chemical usage that has continuously polluted our soils, rivers, and air,’ said Omolo.

Source: Kenya News Agency

The Government is set to release Sh2.8 billion given by the Universal Service Fund (USF) to improve digital connectivity in the country, Principal Secretary (PS), the State Department for Broadcasting and Telecommunications Professor Edward Kisiang’ani has announced

Prof. Kisiang’ani said the money which is set to be released by the Treasury next week is meant to help the underserved areas to be connected digitally so that they can also reap the benefits of technology.

The PS reiterated that Government is in the process of establishing 25,000 WiFi hotspots across the country as well as 1,450 digital hubs spread across all constituencies.

He said the National Government-Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) will allocate three percent of its monies towards infrastructural upgrades on this digital hubs initiative in the constituency digital hubs, which are physical spaces with access to superfast broadband alongside community and business-focused services.

The PS said the digital hubs in the country have t
hree components; Centres of excellence, the standard, and the ordinary, but the centres of excellence are key in helping the communities that do not have internet access to get this service, as they are constructed in the villages to bring this service closer to the people.

‘This will help these underserved communities to even start sources of income and improve the quality of their lives,’ the PS said.

He was speaking in Naivasha during the Ministry of Information, Communication, and the Digital Economy stakeholders’ workshop organized by Parliament.

The Information Communications Technology (ICT) hubs will also be used for citizen digital literacy training, film creation, and public access to government services in all wards across the country beginning this year.

This will help provide digital connectivity, support the development of digital skills, and create jobs and this will be done through the laying of 10,000 kilometres of fiber, thanks to the digital superhighway initiative.

Prof. Kisiang’ani a
lso revealed that the new structure for the State Department of Broadcasting and Telecommunications has been approved and will be rolled out soon and the department has also been carrying out interviews for promotions to upgrade the officers who have stagnated for a long time.

Turning his guns on the media in the country, the PS lamented that the media fraternity has been giving the Government what he termed as negative coverage and implored it to endeavor to highlight the many positive things that are happening in the country.

‘We all belong to this country and the Government belongs to all of us, we should also try and show the world the good things that are happening in the country,’ Kisiang’ani stated.

Dagoretti South Member of Parliament (MP) John Kiarie Waweru who is also the Chair of the Communication, Information Innovation Committee in the National Assembly decried the low funding to the Ministry of Information, Communications and Digital Economy, which he said is a critical ministry mandated to f
acilitate digitization of government services and increased internet connectivity to underserved communities at a time that the ICT sector is expected to contribute 10 percent to the National Gross Domestic Product by 2025.

Kiarie urged the Ministry to work with available resources towards achieving priority areas such as government digitization and digitalization agenda.

He revealed that the Government had digitized over 15,845 services and added that the digitization program would enable the sealing of revenue leakages and facilitate increased revenue collections.

Kiarie said the Naivasha workshop which entails engagements with the state departments will help review their performance and achievements based on this financial year’s budget allocation and announced that 1.2 million Digital Literacy (DL) devices have been distributed over 22,000 schools to enhance digital literacy.

Kiarie noted that the Kenya Kwanza Administration is on course to facilitate the setting up of 25,000 WIFI hotspots across the
country to boost e-commerce, build 1,450 digital hubs across constituencies, and targets to roll out 100,000 kilometres of fiber out of which 20,000 kilometers have already been laid. All these, he said are geared towards driving the digitization agenda in the next three years.

Kenya has notably emerged as a significant force in Africa’s digital evolution over time. The country has launched numerous digital infrastructure projects to open doors for development and economic expansion.

Kenya, which is ranked second among African nations with the greatest level of technological advancement, recently unveiled a ten-year digital master plan.

In the digital master plan, the four main pillars are digital infrastructure, digital services and data management, digital skills, and encouraging digital innovation for entrepreneurship.

The creation of 1,450 information and communication hubs across the country is in line with the digital infrastructure pillar, which also entails the installation of 25,000 hotspots in p
ublic spaces as mentioned earlier, and important business centres.

It will also entail the development of the government Cloud, the acceleration of the Konza Technopolis and Smart City development, the construction of regional ICT infrastructure, and the creation of a sustainable power plan to support the infrastructure.

Source: Kenya News Agency

A family from Gicegeri Village in Embu, is appealing for financial assistance to help them bury their kin whose body is detained at Kenyatta University Hospital mortuary over a Sh335,000 bill.

Forty-nine-year-old Cecilia Marigu died of cancer on February 3 after spending a month at Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital (KUTRRH), where she incurred a bill of Sh635,000.

Marigu started ailing in 2022 after suffering a swollen leg and has been in and out of various hospitals in Embu until late last year when she was diagnosed with cancer and referred to KUTRRH.

The family after holding several fundraisers, was able to raise Sh300,000 and has been unable to clear the balance to facilitate the release of the body for burial owing to financial hardships.

The bill continues to accumulate with every passing day the body stays at the morgue at the rate of Sh1,000 per day, prompting the family to plead for assistance.

‘We have reached a dead end and we are now appealing to well-wishers to com
e to assist us offset the bill to enable us to bury my daughter,’ said her 84-year-old mother Agatha Murangi.

The deceased’s sister Felista Muthoni said she sold her piece of land and a stall she owned in Embu Town to fund her treatment and has no other means to raise more money to offset the bill.

She said she is the one now left taking care of her elderly mother and two children left behind by the deceased as her other siblings are financially unstable.

‘The issues of our sister’s body are giving us sleepless nights as a family having not been able to bury her so that we can also have closure over the matter,’ she said.

Muthoni said no mourners come to their home anymore as they got tired of attending the rites with no indication of burial.

‘People also stopped contributing towards the burial and we have been left on our own,’ Muthoni lamented, as she reached out to people of goodwill to come to their rescue.

Source: Kenya News Agency