- Co-authored by Tom Lutali
Residents of Marakusi in Lugari Sub-County have started donating materials in an attempt to save the ailing Lake Basin Primary School from imminent collapse.
The residents say their pleas to the area MP, Nabii Nabwera, to save the school from its dire situation have fallen on deaf ears.
On Thursday last week, two locals donated posts, timber, trees, and rolls of barbed wire to kickstart a community initiative after other attempts to stabilize the institution failed.
Delvine Ondego, a resident, offered the school 149 posts, 29 pieces of timber, and five trees as a way of helping the school survive these hard times.
Another local, Felix Odera, has donated two rolls of barbed wire to fence the school.
How bad is the situation at Lake Basin Primary School?
Established with much promise, Lake Basin Primary School now teeters on the brink of collapse due to the dearth of basic amenities required for education, such as classrooms and toilets, despite the fact that other schools are basking in the generous support of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).
The school’s total population is now 80. Pupils in Grades One and Two are crammed into one mud-walled classroom, while the other classes, apart from Class Eight, also use similar structures.
Despite being a government-owned school, the institution only has four teachers, including two interns and two employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), including deputy headteacher Christine Misiko, who reported in February.
Even more concerning, the school, which is just a short walk from former Lugari MP Ayub Savula’s home and has done the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) only three times since it started in 2014, has never had a headteacher.
It received a mean of 196.91 out of 23 students in the KCPE 2020, with the first student receiving 256 marks. In the KCPE 2021, the top candidate got 286 marks.
In the KCPE 2022, the top candidate out of 27 received 251 marks, as the school recorded a mean of 183.15.
“I was posted here as a deputy headteacher. To be honest, the infrastructure here is in poor condition. We have two permanent classrooms, one of which we share with class eight pupils; the rest are mud structures,” the deputy headteacher, who took over the institution in February, said.
Ms. Misiko said she has nowhere to store school property and always has to carry it in her car. She added that the school has insufficient learning materials, including books.
The situation is bleak, forcing parents to withdraw their children from the school.
“Poverty has caused the community to neglect the school, and generally, parents here do not value education, which could be why the school lacks support,” Ms. Misiko added.
The pupils here are not only deprived of a conducive learning environment but are also exposed to danger due to an ongoing land dispute. As a result, the school has no fence, leaving an old building inside, which poses a risk to the learners.
One Mr. Clearance, a neighbor of the school, told WKT in February that he was involved in the sale of an acre of land to Lake Basin Primary School for Sh750,000. The school paid them Sh600,000 and is yet to clear the remaining Sh150,000.
“We have our documents here. According to the documents, nothing will take place at that school without clearing the balance. The school processed the title deed but did not give us our share,” he said.
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