How audit lapses fuelled theft of education cash

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i

The Ministry of Education has come under sharp focus over audit lapses that have cost the Government billions of shillings.

It has been revealed that the ministry's auditors carry out the audits from the comfort of their offices and never visit schools.

An Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) examination report, which was released on Wednesday, says that schools submit records of their spending to the auditors who have no way of verifying the alleged expenditure. This, EACC said, allows passing of fictitious expenditure.

"For example, the team was informed of some instance where the head teacher submitted a very good report on construction of a classroom under KESSP programme, and yet there was no classroom on the ground," the report said.

The document also found glaring missteps that ought to have been corrected by the ministry.

"The team noted that a number of issues which should be addressed to enhance efficiency in disbursement of Free Primary Education (FPE) funds were not corrected," it added.

In its recommendations, the report says that audit of schools should be undertaken by following the appropriate procedures and that the audit department should be properly facilitated to do its work effectively.

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i said he had constituted a fresh team to audit schools.

Dr Matiang'i said the Directorate of School Audit would now be in charge of all audits.

errors and omissions

The report also cites a gap in training of schools instructional materials management unit staff (SIMMU).

"Data from schools such as school names, enrolment numbers, bank account details are captured and updated by the SIMMU staff. However, most of the staff have not been trained on the operation of the system. This has led to several errors and omissions in the database which could lead to problems such as over disbursements, under disbursements, delayed disbursements and disbursements to incorrect accounts," said the report.

The ministry is also accused of not having a proper back up system for data. "The team was informed that back up of the system is done by the ICT unit at the server level. However, there is no offsite back up of the system. This may lead to loss of data in the event of complete system failure and other disasters," says report.

Security of the FPE disbursement system was also found to have loopholes that aid theft of school funds.

"The...ministry has a password management policy as a control measure to safeguard against unauthorised access to the system. However, some users are not willing to change passwords after three months as stipulated in the policy," the report says.