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Ongeri Hits Back At Uhuru Over FPE Missing Money

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Published on Sunday, 31 July 2011 00:17

The Sh4.2 billion fraud at the Ministry of Education has taken a new twist as the Education Ministry insists that Treasury erroneously bloated the figure. The Education ministry has lodged a complaint with the Office of the President that Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta wrongly calculated the missing cash.

Education minister Prof Sam Ongeri now says the correct amount needing scrutiny is Sh75 million and not Sh 4.2 billion as stated by the Deputy Prime Minister. The alleged miscalculation has strained relations between Uhuru and Ongeri prompting the intervention of President Kibaki, according to reliable sources,. Uhuru and Ongeri are close allies of Kibaki under the PNU.

Uhuru is seen as Kibaki's preferred successor while Ongeri is the most senior PNU minister in Nyanza, particularly among the Kisii. Ongeri has been under intense pressure to resign over alleged misappropriation of the money for the Free Primary Education.

In December 2010 donors including the British government claimed that Sh7bn had gone missing and cut off support for Free Primary Education. Uhuru then released an audit report on June 13 indicating that civil servants had colluded to steal Sh4.2 billion meant for FPE, about half of what the donors claimed was stolen. According to the Treasury, Education officials siphoned the cash through phony school bank accounts and manipulated cashbooks to cover up their deeds.

Uhuru said Sh2.2 billion for the financial year 2008/2009 was siphoned through unsupported Financial Monitoring Reports while Sh 1.9 billion were disbursements diverted to individuals, wrong schools or wrong accounts.

Shortly afterwards, President Kibaki surprised even his close allies by visiting Ongeri in Kisii where he presided over a harambee for the South Kenya Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. The visit was said to be part of Kibaki's strategy to defuse tension between Uhuru and Ongeri.

In its complaint to the President, the Education ministry says Treasury auditors failed to balance FMR figures causing an error of Sh2.2 billion that Uhuru reported as misappropriated cash. "The amount deemed ineligible is the difference between the Audited Accounts and FMRs for financial year 2008/09. It is a reconciliation figure and not actual cash," the complaint reads.

The Education ministry says that supporting vouchers for Sh1.9 billion that was government contribution were left out by Treasury auditors. "These figures are supported by various payment vouchers in the Recurrent and Development cash books for Financial Year 2008/2009, which are available for audit," the ministry says.

The Education ministry says the Treasury auditors also omitted supporting documents for Sh370 million contributed by donors. The Treasury auditors said they found 85 schools with no Teachers Service Commission Codes. "We however checked in our database and only 6 out of 85 schools for not have TSC codes," the Education ministry complaint reads.

The Education ministry insists that verification through Standard Chartered Bank showed that over 100 schools had received their allocations even though Treasury claimed they had not been paid. The Education ministry however concedes some schools had been mentioned twice in the bank list. "Given the above, there is need to investigate an amount of Sh75,200,000 being the difference between the MoE disbursement schedule. Until thorough investigations are done up to the school level, we cannot confirm what happened," the complaint adds.

The Education ministry says it was actually Ongeri who asked Treasury to carry out the audit and it was not Uhuru's initiative as claimed by the Treasury.

As evidence, Education attached a letter dated February 25, 2010 addressed to Uhuru where Ongeri said a previous audit by Kenya National Audit Office had highlighted weaknesses in the administration of FPE funds. "I am therefore requesting that the Ministry of Finance make preparations to undertake an urgent forensic audit," Ongeri wrote to Uhuru.

Ongeri told Uhuru that the audit was necessary across the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP). "The envisaged report will help strengthen Sector Internal Controls and Financial Accounting Systems especially at the school and institutional level and provide inputs to the finalisation of KESSP Phase II," added Ongeri.

But Uhuru's spokesman Munyori Buku yesterday stood by the released report. "The audit was not done in secret. If anything there was an opportunity for the people targeted to respond to queries before the final report was prepared. It is not about Treasury trying to fix anybody," Buku said.

Local Government permanent secretary Karega Mutahi, who was Education PS when the alleged siphoning took place, has asked the audit be carried out afresh by the Auditor General. The PS expressed dissatisfaction with the Treasury audit. "It is unfair to portray innocent public officers as corrupt where no iota of evidence is available to indicate impropriety," said Karega.