Gitonga Mukunji, a member of parliament from Manyatta, has started a scholarship program for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) courses that will be paid for by the National Government-Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF). The goal is to give school dropouts the skills they need to be self-employed.
The MP said that since white-collar jobs were going away, there was a need to change the way people thought about blue-collar jobs that require more manual labor.
Mukunji said on Wednesday, when he gave a check for Sh. 1.7 million to the first 67 students at Manyatta Technical and Vocational College, that technical education was one of the few fields where people with good technical skills could be sure of a source of income.
He said that the country’s job market needed technical knowledge more than the general education that has been popular for years. This is because many students saw themselves doing high-paying jobs that required more brainpower than skills and natural abilities.
“For example, in the construction industry, you need people who can do things like masonry, carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work to help one civil engineer,” he said.
He said that as the country moved from low-income to upper-middle-income, more and more students were interested in technical education, which was important for making independent workers and entrepreneurs.
The lawmaker said that the county government was working on a lot of big projects that gave people with technical skills in related fields a lot of opportunities.
“In this constituency alone, we are building two state-of-the-art stadiums, close to 40 kilometers of paved roads, and an affordable housing project will start later this year,” he said.
He also said, “All of these projects will need a large number of our young people with technical skills.”
He said that the scholarship program will run every year so that many more school dropouts and people who quit school will be able to take advantage of such opportunities when they come up.
At the same time, the MP said that plans were being made to set up a computer lab with internet in the institution so that young people could learn about online jobs.
David Ngari, the principal of the college, praised the project and said that it will help a lot to get more students to sign up and keep them there because they won’t have to worry about how to raise fees.
“Our students come from the local area, and some have had trouble paying their school fees, which caused them to drop out. With this initiative, that will no longer be an issue,” he said.
Dr. Jackson Ngari, who is the education secretary for the ACK Diocese of Embu, told school dropouts to take advantage of the chance to learn skills that will help them become their own bosses.
