Education CS Julius Ogamba put to task over Sh1.3 billion 'ghost school scandal'
The shocking revelations were brought to light during a parliamentary committee session on Thursday, where Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba was put to task over the disbursement.
A fresh storm has hit the Ministry of Education after MPs revealed that part of the Sh1.3 billion school infrastructure fund was channelled to ghost institutions in what they termed a well-planned fraud by officials within the ministry.
The money, meant to improve learning facilities across the country, was reportedly allocated to fake schools that only existed on paper, complete with fictitious enrolment data and forged locations.
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The shocking revelations were brought to light during a parliamentary committee session on Thursday, where Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba was put to task over the disbursement.
MPs claimed that a group of rogue insiders at Jogoo House altered the list of schools approved by Parliament and inserted non-existent ones that ended up receiving millions of shillings from the public fund.
Luanda MP Dick Maungu presented a list of four schools to support the claims. He said two of the schools, Bomet High School and Kamuret Secondary School, do not exist at all, yet each received Sh50 million.
The remaining two, Olbutyo Boys and Olbutyo Girls secondary schools, are located extremely close to each other, raising doubts about the equity and logic in distributing the funds.
“There is a dark area in the infrastructure funding. Names of schools that did not come from this House found their way into the list and were given millions of shillings,” Maungu told the committee.
He went on, “Ghost schools received money despite not being approved by this House; there is a strong cartel in your ministry. You oversee a ministry full of cartels because, how do you explain that several schools which were on the list did not receive any money and ghost schools were given millions?”
Maungu further questioned how schools in the same neighbourhood both qualified for large amounts while other regions got nothing. He challenged the CS to present a full list of all institutions that received money from the Sh1.3 billion allocation, arguing that many were not approved by Parliament and likely do not exist.
“The reason why the Cabinet Secretary cannot table the list is because of the anomalies,” he added.
Kitutu Masaba MP Clive Gisairo said the revelations pointed to a deeply entrenched fraud scheme and demanded an independent probe. He expressed concern that if infrastructure funding was being stolen so openly, the situation with other education funds might be worse.
“You are running a ministry that should be branded a cartel. If the infrastructure fund can be siphoned this way, it therefore means that capitation is worse,” Gisairo said.
In response, CS Ogamba pledged to get to the bottom of the matter and committed to visiting schools and verifying if they physically exist.
“I have given clear instructions that we need the list, and probably we will visit schools to ascertain whether they exist or not,” Ogamba said, adding that investigations had been initiated to unearth those behind the manipulation.
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