A lobby group championing for the rights of the boy child has threatened to sue the Kenyan Universities and colleges central placement Services over what it terms as gender imbalance.
Through the group dubbed ‘Ladder of Hope’, the lobbyists faulted KUCCPS for being unfair in allocation of public university and colleges slots.
“The demand by KUCCPS for a boy child to have higher cut-off points than those of the girl child in order to find placement within public institutions is discriminatory and hence unconstitutional,” said the chairman Samuel Muigai.
Karanja lamented that despite the provisions in the constitution of Kenya, which guarantee for the right to freedom against discrimination on basis of sex, the boy child has been abandoned and discriminated upon in several platforms, making him vulnerable.
According to the organisation, the anomaly in public university cluster points had been allowed to flourish illegally, thereby rendering many young men without opportunities for higher learning.
He called upon Education Cabinet secretary Jacob Kaimenyi to intervene and ensure both girls and boys are allocated a neutral ground to compete for public university slots by focusing on performance rather than gender.
“We want to empower male children by coming up with programmes and seminars to ensure that they are not deprived of equal opportunities with their girl counterparts,” said Karanja.
At the same time, the lobby hopes to reduce cases of domestic violence where men are battered.
“We want both boys and girls to be accorded proper protection of the law for purposes of prosperity of Kenya,” said Ibrahim Murgor, who is the director the group.
The group was addressing journalists at a Nakuru hotel on Sunday.