Members of the National Assembly have unearthed a Ksh400 million presidential kitty they claim has previously been operated secretly.
In a meeting with Labour Principal Secretary Nelson Marwa, the legislators, who are members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), demanded that the state should come clean about the kitty.
The kitty is, reportedly, shared among the 290 constituencies with each one qualifying for Kshs1.3 million meant to benefit 45 needy students with each getting Kshs 30,000.
The members claimed that the kitty was being operated secretly with some claiming they didn't even know it existed.
According to a report by People Daily, the committee, which is led by Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi, further reckoned that the kitty did not benefit needy students but was awarded to non-deserving ones.
They further explained to the PS that the kitty was benefitting students from specific ethnic backgrounds.
In light of the events, therefore, the MPs gave the ministry officials a one-week ultimatum to table all the documentation showing the criteria used to decide the beneficiaries of the funds.
Marwa, on the other hand, assured the committee that his ministry was working to rectify the situation to ensure fairness in distributing the bursary.
In 2015, an allocation of Ksh1.3 million from the Presidential Bursary Fund to Roysambu Constituency, reportedly, went missing with payments made to unknown accounts.
A letter from the constituency revealed that only 12 students out of the expected 44 received the disbursement with the rest being untraceable.
