The National Assembly Education Committee, which is in charge of education, rejected proposals to bring back the small milk packets popular with school children during former President Daniel Arap Moi’s tenure in the 1980s and 1990s.
The well-known Maziwa Ya Nyayo initiative was canceled by consecutive administrations because it was too expensive and unsustainable.
A daily supply of 250 ml packets of milk for the 8.3 million pupils in Kenya’s approximately 24,000 schools would have cost the Treasury 1 billion shillings per week had it not been returned.
Expenditures like these would have ballooned to Sh36 billion per year, which would have been too much for a government already struggling to keep up with rising costs and deteriorating debt payment commitments.
Rejecting the bill, the National Assembly’s education committee cited a lack of budget for the program and the risk of it derailing the current school feeding program, which targets low-income areas, particularly slums.”