Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has unearthed an alleged multi-billion shillings scandal at the ministry.
According to the CS, the Ministry has been releasing money meant for free primary educations, but the beneficiaries are non-existent pupils in ghost schools.
Although Magoha has not revealed how long the scandal has been ongoing, he noted that over half a million pupils have received free primary education funds, yet they don't exist.
Magoha notes that the Ministry has been losing over Sh750 million annually.
“Our due diligence identified inflation of numbers of learners from 8.47 million to 9 million learners in the primary school sector. The shortfall of 529,997 learners has led to the saving of Kshs. 752,594,740 annually,” said Magoha.
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Notably, the government has been releasing free primary education funds based on records submitted by the headteachers. The county director of education usually approves the records.
The money is only released once Quality assurance officers authenticate the lists.
However, the government 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.
The alleged fraud came when claims emerged, indicating that some education ministry top officials working to procure desks have been scheming to embezzle funds.
According to reports, the cost per desk presented by Magoha was inflated by an extra Sh1700 per desk, which means the 1,.9 billion shillings allocated for the program could only deliver 250 000 desks.
Initially, the Ministry set the prices at Sh2500 and Sh3800 for primary and secondary school desks.
Under the new scheme, the ministry will supply 622,157 locally assembled desks to 5,136 public primaries (359,450 desks) and 5,243 public secondary schools (262,707 desks, lo
