By Martha John Savio – Kitgum Uganda
Female Member of Parliament in Lamu District of Northern Uganda has showed commitment to promote education through scholarships and provision of scholastic materials to best performing candidates.
She disclosed her pledge to the media in her house during a presentation of her parliamentary manifesto taking education as a priority and subject matter.
Hon. Achora Nancy, women Member of Parliament in the district reiterated her commitment to support best performing learners in primary and secondary schools as well as award the teachers whose subjects shall have been performed best in the Uganda National exams.
She said Lamwo district used to bear best performing candidates in the district and the region yet remained neglected despite the bigger academic role they play in uplifting the district and the region.
She manifested to offer scholastic materials such as 1 school box, a mattress, mathematical set and a dozen of 4 quire books to best performing primary seven candidates who shall emerge from the district.
She also assured to offer best performing candidates from senior 4 and senior 6 academic sections with big suit cases each, mattresses, dozens of 4 quire books and a financial reward of 500,000 Ugandan shillings to a teacher whose subject emerged the top performed.
At the same note, she appealed to parents and guardian’s to invest much of their efforts towards educating their children through meeting their academic demands for the sake of their prosperity.
Meanwhile, Kitgum municipal education Officer Mrs. Atim Harriet Okot urged learners to maintain discipline and manners at school as well as cautioned teachers against expelling learners home due to lack of school fees neither should any teacher exempt any learner from classes.
She also urged parents to provide learners with necessary Bio-Data as a mechanism to mitigate registration process as mandated by the government.
In continuation, she underscored that the Bio-data played a role of digitalizing registration of learners as well as providing ID cards to apprentices in a simplified way.
“Through the Bio-Data, teachers could be able to register the learners. Introduction of Bio-Data is a new government system of issuing learners identification number”.
“In 2023, if a learner is not registered, he/she will not continue with school and in case a private school had not registered at all, the school will be closed from the education system and in case of a government support, that particular school will miss it under permanent secretary of Education Mrs. Lamara Ketty,” she said.
Mrs. Atim said that she took a sample of both primary and secondary Schools and found out that, 9,583 learners in Kitgum have been registered and 16,000 have not yet been registered. Equally to the sample of Kitgum public primary school, she found out that there were 151 pupils at school with only 137 registered in the enrolment book.