KENYA'S BEST PERFORMING GOVERNOR CALLS FOR HUMANITARIAN AID TO SAFE LIVES OF 180,000 WAJIR STARVING RESIDENTS

BY ADOW JUBAT

        Governor Abdullahi addressing a function in Wajir.


Governor Ahmed Abdullahi has on Sunday called for urgent humanitarian interventions to address looming starvation that threats the lives of 180,000 residents in Wajir County.

During a meeting with the county steering group that coordinates and responds to drought and emergencies in his office, the County chief said an urgent intervention is need to ensure that the looming pangs of famine didn’t cause human life. 

The appeal by the governor comes following a monthly report by the National drought Management Authority (NDMA), which states that Wajir as the county that is most affected by the prevailing drought that is currently ravaging most parts of the famine prone Northern region.

While speaking at the function Abdullahi, declared drought in Wajir County as a disaster and called for all local and national stakeholders to double their efforts to curb the imminent disaster likely to be caused by the looming dry spell. 

                   Wajir leaders in a past function in Wajir

He called on all stakeholders including governmental and non-governmental organisations whether local based or not to speedily provide whatever they can offer to caution the affected families from hunger and thirst.

Those who attended the crisis planning meeting included county departments of Health, Water and education as well as partner NGO’s like NDMA, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, ADESO and local organizations such as ALDEF and WASDA.
According to national drought management authority over 180,000 households out of 700,000 populations in the semi-arid are staring starvation, which if not handled with urgency it can lead into humanitarian tragedy.

 Governor Abdullahi has ordered all the relevant departments to disburse the funds to help in forestalling the beckoning humanitarian catastrophe in the County recently rated by a World Bank report as the best in the country among all 47 Counties in use of its finances allocations. 

According to the County boss most parts of the County largely remains dry as the short rains expected on December last year was depressed due to the climatic changes experienced globally.

Meanwhile, leaders in Wajir County have called on the national government to transfer the management of primary education to the county government to encourage prudent and efficient running of primary education.

The leaders while speaking in Eldas sub-county to mark education day, called on the national government to devolve primary education in the County since the administration of Governor Ahmed Abdullahi has shown commitments in improving early childhood education in the county since devolution kicked off two years ago.

"Let the national government transfer the management of primary education to the counties because the sector needs close supervision and the county government can do that in a better ways", said Wajir West MP Abdikadir Ore. 

The leaders also condemned the cancellation of the results of the entire Eldas Boys secondary school claiming KNEC has failed to provide any explanation on its action annulling the results of the school. 

"As the leaders of Wajir, we are waiting for KNEC to give us convincing and timely explanation as to why they had to spoil the future of our children by cancelling their results, failure to which we will seek legal redress soon", said Eldas MP Adan Keynan. 

Wajir County has constructed 70 ECD classes across the county and a model ECD school in each sub county. 350 ECD teachers were also recruited and this has seen an increase of over 80% in the enrollment of students according to the County administration.