Government runs out of cash for free school

The free education programme could be paralysed after the government said it did not have the Sh10 billion needed for the first term of 2009.

The money, Education permanent secretary Karega Mutahi said on Monday, had been spent to import food because of the current drought.

Asked when the money would be available, Prof Mutahi said he did not know.

“It is a question we should not be asking now given the magnitude of the food shortage in the country,” he said.

Charge fees

Already, headmasters are asking the government to allow them to charge fees.

The government pays fees for 8.2 million children in primary schools Another 1.3 million students are enrolled in secondary schools.

Some Sh37 billion has been diverted from programmes such as education to import food, the PS said.

“We expect a delay for a while, but we hope it would be for a short period,” he told journalists at Nairobi’s Kenya Institute of Education where he represented the Education minister at a meeting with development partners to discuss the education budget.

However, an Agriculture ministry official said they had only been given Sh10 billion for the importation of maize.

The minister’s announcement will be bad news for schools which have not received a coin since they reopened in January.

Two weeks ago, the ministry said it would not be releasing funds to buy textbooks, apparently because schools had bought the required stocks.

Many schools buy learning materials on credit and pay when the ministry releases the funds. Learning in schools which decide not to run up debts is likely to be affected by shortages.

On Monday, Prof Mutahi said he hoped headteachers would use the cash sent to them in December to run their schools. But some of the headmasters said the money had long been spent.

Kenya Secondary School Heads Association chairman Cleophas Tirop said schools were facing a financial crisis and many have debts while some do not have learning and teaching materials.

“We are finding it difficult to run schools without funds from the government,” he said.

“We are urging the Education minister to make a statement or ask parents to pay full school fees.”

Each of the 1.3 million students in secondary school is allocated Sh10,265 under the free day school learning programme.

The funds are sent directly to schools in three tranches of Sh5,132.50, Sh3,079.50 and Sh2,053 per student per year. Each tranche is sent out per term.

Parents are responsible for school uniforms, lunch and expansion projects.

In primary schools, the programme had led to an increase in enrolment levels from 5.9 million in 2002 to the current 8.2 million pupils.

The government has spent Sh43.4 billion since the programme was introduced. Under the programme, each pupil in the more than 18,000 primary schools is allocated Sh1,020 a year.

In a speech he read on behalf of Prof Sam Ongeri, the PS said the food shortages in the country had threatened the gains made in education.

“Rising costs of living occasioned by both global recessionary trends and increased costs of production, especially in the food sector, have trickled down to institutions of learning, thus creating a negative impact on government funding for free primary and free day secondary education,” Prof Ongeri said.

The Sh117.5 billion allocated for education in the Budget, he said, was not enough. However, he acknowledged there was stiff competition for government resources by other important sectors.

Problems for the education sector will be further compounded by the fact that a partnership programme, the Fast Track Initiative, that provides cash for education is about to end.

As a result, said Prof Ongeri, the country is “likely to experience huge financial gaps”.

On a positive note, the minister said the country was moving well and 70 per cent of children sitting their exams would proceed to the next level next year.

The government, with 42 ministries, is running out of cash. Treasury PS Joseph Kinyua speaking at a donors’ meeting in Nairobi recently, said the government was in dire need of Sh70 billion to seal an added budget deficit of Sh27 billion.

The money was needed to fund maize import and restock diminishing foreign currency reserves at Central Bank.

Sh127bn deficit

The current budget (2008/09) has a Sh127 billion deficit, which the government is struggling to fill amid dwindling tax collection and the global financial crisis that has seen it shelve plans to raise about Sh34 billion in the international market.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga is also on the record saying “our foreign exchange earnings are on a decline at a time when we must expend a large amount of foreign exchange to pay for emergency imports of maize”.