At least 36 primary schools near the Seven Folks Dams in Lower Eastern will benefit from relief food provided by KenGen to retaining learners in classes.
The semi-arid counties of Machakos, Embu and Kitui saw little rainfall in the past seasons, which has left residents with little or no food.
While launching the Sh20 million food distribution programme aimed at feeding the schools near the three stations of Seven Folks, Turkwel and Olkaria, Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) Corporate affairs manager Grace Chepkwony said the programme will fill in the gap left by prolonged droughts witnessed in Kenya in the recent past.
Chepkwony, who led the launch at Machang’a Primary School in Mbeere South in Embu on Friday, said the school attendance in schools within these areas has been affected by a lack of food in schools and in majority of homes.
“As the company we realised some communities have suffered by lack of food thus causing absenteeism in Schools. Our mission is to ensure we keep children in School by giving food, especially the schools near our installations,” she said.
Lack of food affects pupil’s performance as well as enrolment and attendance within the drought-affected areas in the country.
The lack of food led to the State setting up School feeding programme that has seen over 1.6 million pupils from arid and Semi-arid lands benefit.
This led to the government allocating Sh5 billion to the programme during the 2023-24 budget.
However, Chepkwony said environment is among their pillars, which aims at boosting agricultural production for community sustainability.
“Sustainability is at the core of everything we do and that’s why we focus on the environment, because if you look at farming as an environmental issue that means prolonged drought results to lack of food. We’ve been providing tree seedlings in order to bolster environment conservation and hopefully we’ll provide more,” said Chepkwony.
Mbeere South Deputy County Commissioner George Omollo urged the parents to make good use of the anticipated rains in the year and cultivate their fields.
“I would like to call upon everyone within this area to prepare their farms on time so that we can make good use of the coming rains in order to grow enough food for the families,” he said.
Machang’a Primary School received bags of Maize, beans, rice, cooking oil among others.
