Kisumu county warned against relocating Kisumu Boys, Girls schools
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has warned against the relocation of Kisumu Boys High School and it´s sister school, Kisumu Girls.
This is after Kisumu governor Anyang Nyong’o said that Kisumu Boys High School and other schools within Kisumu city be relocated.
According to Magoha, learners at the twin schools are safe in their current locations.
“So do not scare my students. Every child in this school is as safe as the other one,” he said.
According to Nyong’o, the schools have no economic value despite them sitting on prime land.
The governor said that a city should be operated as a profit-making entity.
“Considering the value of the place, that land needs to be useful. We need to construct an integrated urban centre rather than schools,” said Nyong’o.
Kisumu Boys, was built during the pre-colonial period and will be relocated to a 105 acres of land parcel in Kibos area.
There has been a plan by the national government to have several schools in the area moved. Some of the structures needed to be moved include Kisumu Girls High School, Manyatta Arabs School, the Kisumu County Referral Hospital, the main bus terminus and the Jua Kali market.
“Each school has a field, a swimming pool and other amenities that have occupied [large parcels of] land. Why don’t we take them to an area where schools share amenities? We don’t need to have a field for each school in a town,” Nyong’o said.
“Five schools can have one field because they don’t use it all the time. Students from school A can use it the morning and, in the afternoon, school B brings its students,” he added.
The governor while justifying his reason illustrated the use of the Kisumu ASK grounds in Mamboleo was converted to a 30,000 capacity Jomo Kenyatta International Stadium.
“ASK show ground is an area of about 100 acres. It used to have a show of two weeks in a year and the rest of the year the 100 acres remained idle in the centre of the city,” he said.
“And now an investor has built ultramodern convention centre and the other one has expressed interest in constructing a hotel around the stadium,” he explained.
