By John Ogulei
SOROTI CITY
The newly elected Soroti City Mayor and his two division mayors revealed their plans in restoring the declining educational sector in the City.
The new Soroti City Mayor Joshua Edogu, Soroti City East Division Mayor Paul Omer and Peter Patrick Emaru of Soroti West Division are to be welcomed by declining educational sector.
The sector is faced with problems including inadequate capitation grants, scholastic materials, teacher absenteeism, poor remuneration and lack meals for students that have affected the completion rates.
Edogu has challenged Soroti Parents to provide their children with food in order to improve on the education sector in the newly curbed Soroti City.
He says as a city authority, they are going to introduce a school feeding programme to enable learners to be attentive while in class.
To attain the desired quality for UPE, the government requires to raise its expenditure per pupil to Shs60,000, up from the current Shs10,000, the National Planning Authority (NPA) recommends in its comprehensive evaluation of the 2018 UPE Policy.
Paul Omer who has been the interim Soroti City Mayor but decided to contest for division mayor said, under his new leadership he is going to continue implementing measures aimed at improving the quality of education and addressing the factors causing pupils/students to drop out of school.
He said he will challenge the central government through the Ministry of Education to focus on school-level support supervision and granting self-sufficiency to schools.
He added that he will ask government to provide free sanitary pads for all girls in UPE and USE schools and build and equip secondary schools as well as make schools attractive to students by providing food and increase learning materials to schools.
Peter Patrick Emaru for Soroti City west says he will implore the government to integrate technical education into the educational system.
“The Secondary and tertiary education system must be able to address our needs. I Promise to work with government to ensure that our education addresses the skilling needs of our economy while improving the learning environment for learners, parents and teachers,” added Emaru.
He added that, “I will ensure that schools and teachers are facilitated better because I need them to build the citizens we need. The funds sent to facilitate schools should reach the students they are intended to benefit. I will renovate and put up new structures because some of the students study under dilapidated structures which is inconvenient for their education. I will also put in place a team to follow up students who drop out of school.”
Recently while addressing the media, Alfred Enyidu, Headmaster Pioneer Primary School, told journalists that the school is in dire need of toilets revealing that there’s just one toilet for students which is also shared with the community and one for teachers.
