FUTILE
“I made fliers with his picture and a few details about him and started circulating them in Chinga. I gave it to everyone I met, trying to see if anyone would have information about his whereabouts,” said Ms Gitau. However, the exercise proved futile.
At Othaya Boys School, Cornelius Macharia Wang’ombe, a Form Three student, went missing on March 30.
His father, Solomon Wang’ombe, received a phone call from the principal on March 31 alerting him that his son was not in school.
SICK
The school filed a missing person report at Othaya Police Station and the matter was recorded in the Occurrence Book as OB16/13/03/19.
The National Parents Association accused principals of neglecting their duties of taking care and attending to students’ needs.
The association’s chairman Nicholas Maiyo said that in case of a student falling sick, principals, as the school custodians, must ensure that they are taken to hospital and immediately inform parents.
However, he said, this had not been happening as parents only got to know about the state of their children when the sickness worsened.
“Some students even get sick and parents never get to know about it. Principals have neglected their administrative roles and duties and it is time for them to do their work as they are supposed to,” said Mr Maiyo.
BOARDING SCHOOLS
He noted that most students in boarding schools learn far away from their home counties.
This means parents are unable to communicate with them and know their progress as regularly as they would wish.
“It is very painful for a parent to learn about the death of his or her child, yet nobody informed them of their sickness,” he said.
Ms Lenairoshi said TSC would not hesitate to take action on any teacher found culpable for a learner’s death.
“It is in this regard that the commission is working with other State agencies to establish the circumstances under which the deaths occurred,” she said.
According to students who spoke to the Sunday Nation, whenever they fall sick, they are given pain killers and treated for malaria without undergoing any medical tests.
MEDICAL CARE
To enhance student medical care, the government last year introduced the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) cover in public secondary schools.
The Ministry of Education listed 5,314 accredited health facilities to cover all the secondary school students.
Schools were required to choose accredited health facilities near them for students’ outpatient services.
