The Ministry of education headed by the tough-talking cabinet secretary George Magoha might have lost more than a whopping 3.7 billion Kenyan shillings over two years in a convoluted scheme that seems to have started in the early years of the Jubilee administration according to an audit report by the auditor general Nancy Gathungu.
The scheme involves inflation of student numbers, the creation of ghost schools, and double payments to some schools to drain taxpayers’ money. It is not clear whether the scheme is done by the ministry of heads and by unscrupulous schools heads but with these fictitious statistics, billions are then wired to schools for the free primary and Gathungu revealed that the Ministry of Education officials made an overpayment of Sh1.81 billion to about 2,610 public secondary schools in different counties across the country.
Gathungu further indicated in her report that the ministry disbursed Sh26.83 million to five schools that don’t exist here in Kenya. This became apparent when the schools in question failed to avail the schools’ registration certificates, Teachers’ Service Commission appointment letters, and posting of the principals and boards of management meetings approving the opening of bank accounts to the auditors.
George Magoha’s Ministry is one of the heavily funded ministries in the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta as it oversees the implementation of free primary and secondary education. This is evidenced in the 2021-22 financial year where Ministry has been allocated Sh503 billion in the budget.
The money includes Sh62.2 billion for free secondary education, Sh12 billion for free primary, and Sh4.2 billion for improvement of school infrastructure. In 2018/2019, the schools had no identification numbers, some of which could not be traced in the National Education Management Information System (Nemis) and the list of TSC-registered schools.
Corruption doesn’t seem to end in this country and a few civil servants in government are enriching themselves using public money for development and services to the Kenyans.
