Students from vulnerable families will have first priority in bursaries and scholarships allocations- MP Melly assures.

Tindiret MP Julius Melly said that he will consider the students from vulnerable families in the annual National Government – Constituency Development Funds allocated for bursaries and scholarships.

Following the recent upsurge of the tertiary education school fees which affected both the public and private universities, the legislator announced that he will focus the NG-CDF project to pay school fees for the needy learners in the community.

The presidential working party on education has tabled its recommendation on fees for universities across the country.

The taskforce has recommended university fee increments from the current Ksh.16,000 to Ksh.52,000.The taskforce is asking the government to increase its funding of education at the university level, which currently falls below the institutions’ needs.

“The changes will adversely affect many students. My intervention is to cushion the parents struggling to pay fees for their bright children. The global inflation has caused the increased cost of education not only in Kenya and as leaders we have to create solutions to leverage the situation for our people,” he stated.

The debt currently stands at Ksh.56.13 billion, including deductions for Pay As You Earn (PAYE),pension, NHIF, NSSF amongst others, with the taskforce recommending that the state forgo the debt.In public universities, there is a shortfall of about Ksh.164 billion, cumulatively from the 2018/2019 to the 2022/2023 academic year. Private universities are better off with a funding deficit of Ksh. 56.96 billion over the same period.

He noted that the current changes will lock out thousands of Kenyans who seek to pursue their education dreams in an economy that is overburdened by the increasing number of unemployed graduates.