A junior clerical officer in the Ministry of Education is on the spot for swindling millions from the government after successfully creating a fake public school and a bank account where government capitation funds were directed.
A report submitted by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) shows that the junior employee benefited from over Ksh11 million disbursed by the government.
The monies were directed to Mundeku Secondary School, which only existed on paper.
“The committee observed that there was a fictitious school called Mundeku Secondary School in Kakamega County that benefited from the disbursement amounting to Sh11,131,305.53,” stated the report.
The officer who the committee identified as Joshua Ocharo Momanyi formed Mundeku Secondary school only on paper and successfully listed it as one of the schools in the disbursement schedule.
According to the report from PAC which is chaired by Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi, he also went ahead and opened an account at a local bank using his credentials as the signatory where received millions of government financial disbursements.
“The said Mr Joshua Ocharo Momanyi was a signatory to the said fictitious school account held at a local bank in Kakamega,” read the report which is now in the parliament.
PAC report shows that Momanyi was a clerical officer at the Directorate of Education Offices in Kakamega County.
In the same report, PAC revealed that another officer manipulated the school enrollment figures of over 150 public schools in the country.
As a result, the government made over Ksh103 million for students who only existed on paper and whose where about no one could justify.
“In this regard, the State Department has recovered the total amount of Sh103,049,164.00 as per attached schedule. The officer involved in data entry, who occasioned the variance between enrolment data submitted by schools and the enrolment data used by the State Department for computation of amounts due to schools,” the report says.
The two government officers have been interdicted with the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) being expected to carry further investigations.
The education ministry is also expected to aid in the process of further investigation as it makes effort to recover the overpayment.
PAC has called upon the EACC to expedite the matter and ensure that everyone else who was involved is brought to justice and to serve as a lesson to others.
“The committee recommends that within three months after tabling and adoption of this report, the EACC should conclude its investigations. Joshua Ocharo Momanyi and any other public officer and entity found culpable should be duly recommended for prosecution for committing an offense of financial misconduct,” reads the report.
In one of the Auditor General’s recent reports, it was found that Ksh269,254,288 had been made as an overpayment in over to185 schools across the country.
The Ministry of Education, in its defense, said that it had applied different disbursement rates of Ksh12,870 and Ksh22,244 for the 2017 and 2018 academic years respectively.
“While disbursing funds for term one of January 2018, the State Department used estimates since the figures for form one had not been established,” the ministry said.
