For the millionth time, the youth who have been placed to various universities in Kenya to start First Year studies have raised the alarm about barriers to the admission services for lacking the all-important national identity card (ID).
At a Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) sensitisation forum in Kisii on Monday, the youth recounted their pain regarding failed attempts to apply for the higher education (Helb) loans and the inter-universities transfers a few months to joining the training institutions.
Without the State loans, many young people miss the admissions while some of those who join are forced to drop out of school since they cannot register for studies or access services such as accommodation and libraries.
And, those who are unable to make the KUCCPS inter-univerisity transfers are consigned to degree programmes they did not want to pursue in the first place. Such barriers, therefore, are akin to killing people’s dreams, which eventually dim prospects of the national economy when talents are ruined along the way due to people going to school for the sake of going.
We ask the government to confront these simple-to-deal-with barriers in efforts to allow Kenyan youth pursue their professional dreams with as much as possible with a bearing on nation building goals.
One of the ways of doing this is to ensure Form Four students or any learners who have attained the age of majority at 18 years, according to the Kenyan law, apply for the national identity (ID) from as early as Term One and secure it before leaving the school gate.
This should be on a rolling basis such that those who hit 18 years are issued with the document before they apply for university and college placements whose services require the national ID.
Without a deliberate effort, the young people will keep citing barriers to their dreams while the government keeps glossing over the same demands, creating a circus of sorts. No Kenyan should miss government and other services over mundane processes such securing a national ID, which is a right of every citizen.
First Published by A plain
