STUDENTS attending upper secondary schools in Central province will have their fees fully paid thanks to the Central Provincial Government.
Governor Robert Agarobe made the undertaking on his Facebook wall on Friday, Jan 15.
Agarobe wrote: “As we start preparing for the school year I want to advise our parents that the provincial government will be paying 100% out of our PSIP (Provincial Support Improvement Program) funds for all grades 11 and 12 school fees for our students attending our seven upper secondary schools.”
“These initiative started in 2020 and will continue into the future totaling around K2.5million, We will also continue to subsidize our tertiary students as we normally do with K2,000 per student totaling around K3 million.
“Education is a must for all our citizens and central students will always be a priority for my government, however, we need to look at the economics of scale and prioritise where we need to invest first.
“We currently have an internal revenue of around K20 million that we need to commit to grow our economy, these will then address all sectors of our society to improve our standard of living for our citizens such as roads, culverts, churches, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, health etc, etc.
“Our education commitment including our teachers leave fares cost us almost half our internal revenue.
“Our vision is to free up our parents from the burden of paying for their children’s education and get them to plan for their retirement and also use their excess funds to get involved in the incentives we are giving in the SME business space.
“So we pay 100% for years 11 and 12 while we groom and prepare our students who are now young adults to take on the responsibly of investing in themselves through the Government’s HELP initiative, a soft loan that they pay over a very long period of time and will not dent their pay packet at all as their only paying around K30 to K40 per fortnight if they find employment and work.
“Our priority also is to completely rehabilitate our seven upper secondary schools as they are all run down and we have to find the resources to do that, hence our drive to grow our economy.
“Currently Central province is in a deep hole and we slowly climbing out by organising ourselves and aggressively build a new foundation that we have now initiated to grow our economy,” Governor Agarobe said.
