Report on FPE scam to be handed over on Friday

The government audit on the Free Primary Education is ready and will be presented to the Treasury on Friday, a parliamentary committee heard on Tuesday.

The Deputy Auditor-General Alex Rugera told the Public Accounts Committee that the report will first go to Treasury and thereafter be presented to Parliament for discussion.

PAC vice chairman, Dr Julius Kones said the audit was important to ensure that the Sh100 million query raised by donors was indeed legitimate and to help the public understand the depth of the saga.

“We do not want to base our reports on rumours. We want the facts,” said Dr Kones.

The beleaguered Education permanent secretary, Prof Karega Mutahi, said he was ready to give the committee the true picture of what happened to the free learning money.

“I will be more than happy to come and talk about these things before you…because I know you deal with facts,” said Prof Mutahi.

The PS had lamented that there was a “colonial mentality” among Kenyans when it came to donor money, to an extent that “even in a project fully funded by Kenyans, people think it is not the taxpayer footing the bill.”

He said donor money only catered for five per cent of the free learning budget and that it was unlikely that the much touted suspension of funds would cause serious harm to the programme.

Prof Mutahi said “politics was a major problem” in the running of Education in the country.

He tabled a letter from the United States Agency for International Development, one of the donors, saying that the Sh535 million aid that was said to have been suspended was “just a proposed programme that we had no idea it even existed.”

“There was never any money, this is the first time we are hearing of this,” said the PS tabling the letter which quoted press reports on the suspension of the money.

The suspension of the plan was announced by US ambassador Michael Ranneberger.

However, as he said donor’s contribution was not all that important, he added: “While we provide Free Primary Education, the conditions through which they (pupils) learn should also be improved (and that’s why we need the donors.)”

The statement came at the tail-end of a tense inquest into advance payment of Sh86 million to a supplier for the delivery of 580 computers.

The issues raised by the government audit was that it was irregular to pay the money before the goods were delivered, given that the contract stipulated that money be paid according to the goods delivered.