- Subsidies to farmers, an ongoing multi-million dual carriageway from Musikoma to Kanduyi and the modern Masinde Muliro Stadium are among his achievements.
Image: JOHN NALIANYA
Bungoma Governor Wycliffe Wangamati has convened celebrations this Friday to mark three years of his administration.
The celebrations will be held at Kibabii University during which the governor is expected to outline his development scorecard since taking over from Kenneth Lusaka in 2017.
The governor's communication director Tim Machi said the ceremony will give Wangamati an opportunity to outline what he has done and what he intends to do in the next two years.
“The governor will use the opportunity to take residents through his scorecard as envisaged in his manifesto,” Machi told the Star.
The ceremony will be graced by Devolution CS Eugene Wamalwa, nine governors led by Council of Governors chairman Wycliffe Oparanya, Cabinet Secretaries and local leaders.
Wangamati considers his success stories are the ongoing multi-million dual carriageway from Musikoma to Kanduyi and the modern Masinde Muliro Stadium.
Speaking to the Star separately, Wangamati said that some 17,636 farmers carried home 10kg of maize seed, 50kg of planting fertiliser and another 50kg of top dressing fertiliser this year, courtesy of the county's subsidy programme.
“As a result of the subsidy programme, maize harvest per acre has risen from 10 bags in 2017 to 17 bags in 2019,” the governor said.
The governor said maize production has increased from 210,000 tonnes in 2017 to 370,000 in 2018. Another increase was recorded in 2019 when 459,000 tonnes were produced.
Wangamati said the county has helped form 304 new coffee cooperative societies comprising of 63,847 farmers and distributed more than three million coffee seeds and seedlings.
In the education sector, the governor lauded his scholarship project saying a total of 1,500 bright but needy students from the county were in top national and extra-county schools across the country.
“Through this programme, a son to a mama mboga or daughter to a boda boda from Bungoma is today sharing a classroom with sons and daughters of Cabinet Secretaries, ambassadors, chief executives, governors, senators and even MCAs,” he said.
He said the Education department had started upgrading 10 vocational training centres. The upgrade is aimed at improving the quality of technical skills training, increasing enrollment as well as improving the employability of trainees from such institutions.
Already, Wekelekha and Muteremko vocational centres are undergoing renovation. Wekelekha, whose first phase of the upgrade is complete, is already manufacturing county uniforms and masks as part of the efforts to stem the spread of Covid-19.
In the health sector, the governor said he has managed to address the challenge of congestion at the main referral hospital. He said a 300-bed capacity mother and child hospital complex is under construction and will be completed next year.
“In 2019, through the department of Health and Sanitation, we started a massive physical projects which sought long term solutions to challenges afflicting the healthcare in the county among them crippling congestion,” Wangamati said.
Edited by P.O