The Nation (Nairobi)
Daniel Nyassy
9 July 2009
Nairobi — The national bursary allocation system is biased and should be reviewed, an assistant minister has said.
Ganze MP and assistant minister for Immigration and registration of persons Mr Francis Baya said the system favours urban constituencies which receive the lion's share.
Talking on phone from Nairobi yesterday morning, Mr Baya said if the system is not rectified, rural parts of the country would continue to lag behind in education and other development programmes.
"The system is completely wrong and biased. It favours urban constituencies where many parents are already better endowed leaving the poorer and desperate rural constituency families," he said.
The former administrator and diplomat argued that while urban constituencies have industries and better access to income activities, rural constituency residents are poorer and desperate.
"In urban constituencies, majority of parents have jobs, some are casual labourers in the various industries and have an income here and there. Their children access education as they can afford it," he said.
Rural constituencies were neglected in past regimes and should now get more allocation of such funds "because the idea is to have equitable distribution of resources", he said.
Mr Baya said his Ganze constituency, for example, received Sh 900,000 last year while constituencies in Mombasa received upto Sh 2 million and others elsewhere are getting more than Sh 3 million.
"This system where the bigger the population, the more the funds is skewed. The money should be distributed according to poverty levels and needy situation," said the legislator.
The system should be reviewed, argued Mr Baya so that the rural areas could be lifted. This should be the case for all disbursed funds from the Central Government, he said.
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