A multi-million scandal brews at the Ministry of Education

A multi-billion shillings scandal is brewing at the Ministry of Education following revelations that top officials at the ministry have been colluding to pay for non-existent pupils in ghost schools.

According to the Education Cabinet Secretary Prof. George Magoha, a staggering 500,000 plus people have been receiving free primary school education yet they do not even exist.

At the center of these fresh allegations is the distribution of Free Primary Education money with Prof.Magoha claiming the ministry has been losing a whooping 750,000,000 annually….

In the primary school sector our due diligence identified an inflation of numbers of learners from 8.47 million to 9 million learners. The shortfall of 529,997 learners has led to the saving of Kshs. 752,594,740 annually.

Though silent on how long this has been happening, Magoha’s words indicated the alleged theft has been happening for a while.

Upto 2018, The government released capitation money to schools based on the records submitted by respective headteachers and approved by the county directors of education.

The records would then be authenticated by Quality assurance officers before money was released.

The government however embarked on an online digital system, The National Education Management Information system ( NEMIS) where all student data was collected online and schools received money based on the information captured.

At some point, heads of schools were up in arms against the programme saying several students had been left out.

“This management approach has been instrumental in identifying lapses within the Ministry where Public Funds have been misappropriated and measures to ensure that I effectively intervene have been deployed,” Prof. Magoha said.

In addition, there are claims emerging that top ministry officials tasked to oversee the procurement of the desks through the recently launched Government stimulus programme also were on a mission to squander public money.

The figure presented to CS Magoha was inflated by an extra Ksh.1700 per desk which means the 1,.9 billion shillings allocated for the programme could only deliver 250, 000 desks.

CS Magoha however says, over 600, 000 desks will be supplied

The Ministry set the prices at Ksh 2500 and Ksh 3800 for primary and secondary school desks respectively.

The government will now be able to supply 622,157 locally assembled desks to 5,136 public primary (359,450 desks) and 5,243 public secondary schools (262,707 desks, lockers and chairs).