Former Minister of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Patricia Kaliati has appealed to parents in the country to send children to pre-schools.
Kaliati observed that some parents have a tendency of locking their children at home, especially those with various forms of disabilities and also taking small children to markets to help them sell different merchandise, a development which she said fuels up the number of street Children in the country since the children are used up to being in the markets. She warned that the behaviour is retrogressive and has a potential to derail the country’s development.
”Let me encourage all the parents in the country to value the pre-school education. As you know, education is an automatic economic empowerment tool for our people,”
”Therefore, educating a girl child and boy child at a tender age will help us as a country to reap so much benefits,” Kaliati said.
The former Minister was speaking at Mitawa village, Traditional Authority Likoswe in Chiradzulu District where she presided over a graduation ceremony of 42 learners of Chisa Free Nursery School.
Chisa Free Nursery School is a local based non-profit making organization. Since 2018, the organization has been making a significant impact in the provision of free nursery School education to underprivileged and needy children at their centres in Chiradzulu and Balaka Districts.
Founder and Executive Director of the organization a United Kingdom based Malawian, Michael Ndelemani, said he established the schools in a quest to help the Government in poverty eradication drive through the provision of quality pre-school education.
However, Ndelemani says the growing number of learners at both Balaka and Chiradzulu centres has been a big challenge as the organization has resource constraints.
”When we started our operations in 2018, learner enrolment was better, but at the moment, we have a high enrolment against our resources,” Ndelemani said.
One of the parents at the school, Agness Sitole says her child is now able to read and write and hailed the organization for bringing the development in her area.
The organization has a combined enrolment of approximately 300 learners at both Chiradzulu and Balaka centres.
