Thika West sub-county Education Officer Ephantus Micheni has asked parents and teachers to ensure proper keeping and handling of textbooks by children in an effort to reduce the cost they and schools incur in buying new ones every year.
Micheni's call on Tuesday at his Thika office, comes at a time when the prices of textbooks has sky-rocketed, leading to a public outcry from parents taking their children back to school this term.
"Both parents and teachers have a responsibility to ensure children especially the young ones, take good care of their textbooks while at home and school. By doing this, parents with younger kids can have them use the same books instead of buying new ones when they get to that particular class", said Micheni.
He, however, asked parents to invest more in good school bags that can carry books well and give them a longer life.
"I sometimes see children carrying books with polythene bags and sacks. A book carried in such materials cannot even last one academic year because of things like bad weather or the space being too small for all the books to fit in properly," he said.
At the same time he called on the regulation of school second hand books in the streets saying that many were being stolen from schools and from individual students leading to huge losses.