Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) is on the spot over various financial irregularities.

Auditor General Nancy Gathungu in a report for the year ending June 2021 fingered the institution for breaching the law with regards to various procurements and contracts it entered into.  Among the issues she has raised concerns with include regular board expenses, irregular procurement of consultancy services as well as irregular staff mortgage and car loan reserve fund.

With regards to the Procurement of Consultancy Services where the entity paid Sh2.6 million to a consultant for provision of Change Management Program, Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Resolution that took place between December 14 and 19, 2020, Gathungu said that a review of documents provided for audit revealed that the consultant was procured directly and there was no evidence of the measures taken to ensure that the price was fair and reasonable and compared well with known prices of goods, works or services in the, as provided under Section 103(e) of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015.

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She further noted that while the notification of award was issued on December 11, 2020 and accepted by the Consultant on December 14, 2020, this coincided with the date the Program, a move which raised doubts on whether the procedure for notification of intention to enter into a contract as required by the provisions of Section 87 of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015 was followed.

The teachers service commission, TSC is on the spot over payment of excess salaries amounting to ksh385 million. This has ignited concerns over the integrity of the commission’s multibillion-shilling payroll.

An audit of the payroll conducted by the auditor general revealed that TSC paid ksh33 million in excess of salary to 32 teachers alone.

In total, there was over ksh352,853,152 in excess payouts flagged during the audit of the TSC’s books of accounts.

The overpayment granted to teachers and staff was exposed after failure by TSC to explain the origin of the payments and how they piled up to the hundreds of millions.

“The origin and the build-up of the salary overpayments have not been explained,” reads the report by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu.

Gathungu further confirmed her doubts doubts that TSC would not recover the money.

“The repayment period for the recovery of the outstanding amounts is beyond the retirement age of the respective teachers,” the auditor said in respect of the 32 teachers.

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Gathungu added that in the ensuing circumstances, “the recoverability of the ‘salary overpayment’ balance is, therefore, doubtful”.

The auditor cited a case of Sh10,416,781, which is part of the Sh352 million, that the commission had not received payment for over two years, “casting doubts on the recovery of the [entire] amount.”

The auditor said the review also revealed that the commission has no proper internal controls to avert losses through such payments.

“The existence of an effective internal control to safeguard loss of public resources could be confirmed,” she explained.

The revelation escalates concerns about how porous payrolls and lists for entities whose interventions involve the disbursement of cash are.

TSC is among state agencies with huge budgets. In the current financial year, it has been allocated Sh296 billion.

Several audits have flagged the education sector for irregularities in the disbursement of cash from school fees subsidies to capitation fees for technical colleges.

The Vocational and Technical Training department domiciled at the Education ministry may have lost more than Sh6.2 billion in the last financial year from inflated student numbers and unsupported disbursements to colleges.

Part of the amount was Sh2.5 billion, which the audit revealed was disbursed during the Covid-19 lockdown when students were not in session.

The Education ministry was recently called for failing to account for Sh2 billion in respect of government subsidies to primary and secondary schools, and tertiary colleges.

Instances of disbursement to non-existent schools, inflation of student numbers and duplication of allocations were pointed out.

The commission has also been flagged for poor management of salary advances to staff, some of whom the audit established were given additional advances before settling those that were due.

Gathungu said it was in doubt if the TSC would recover Sh2,125,414 “described as undefined recoveries whose composition and support documents were not provided for audit review.”

“Further, Sh4,264,665 in respect of 145 staff had no movement over the last 12 months,” the audit revealed.

“Management did not give any reason for non-recovery of the salary advances.”

TSC has also been queried over disbursements of cash to counties after the commission failed to provide a breakdown of the amounts owed by each county for audit review.

Gathungu has also queried non-remittance of Pay as You Earn tax of over Sh2.2 billion that was due from 5,412 commission staff and 25 staffers of the secretariat.

The audit revealed that the deductions were not done on the grounds that the employees were persons with disabilities.

But Gathungu said a review of the payroll revealed that employees with special needs had special codes 2-9 yet the ones paid had code 0.

The auditor said this denoted that they are not people with special needs and had not been exempted from paying income tax by the Kenya Revenue Authority.

“Failure to deduct and remit Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax is contrary to the Income Tax Act CAP 470. Consequently, the management was in breach of the law,” she said.

The Education Ministry, led by Cabinet secretary professor George Magoha is on the spot for denying the Auditor-General access to a student’s database, in a bid to facilitate scrutiny of Sh60 billion expenditure. This move has raised untold fears concerning the transparency in the use of free education funds.

The State auditor general confirmed impossibility to verify the expenditure of Sh59,541,584,343 since she was unable to access the student enrolment data in the National Education Management Information System (Nemis), caused by restrictions by the State Department of Early Learning and Basic Education.

According to the Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu, several anomalies were noted in the transfer of education subsidies to schools.

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She maintained that the ministry transferred free education subsidies to 9,024 secondary schools amounting to Sh36,739,481,231 yet the data on the number of students per school and county at any time of disbursement could not be verified.

“The reason for non-verification was due to inability to access the student enrollment data in the National Education Management Information System (Nemis) as a result of restrictions by the Management,” Gathungu told Parliament in a report.

The ministry declined to avail the data despite Gathungu’s  warning that failure to grant access to the Nemis system contravenes Section 9(e) (i) of the Public Audit Act, 2015.

According to the Act, the Auditor-General or an authorised officer shall have powers of unrestricted access to all books, records, returns, reports, electronic or otherwise and other documents of entities listed under Article 229(4) of the Constitution.

This implies that the Auditor-General, or an officer authorised should enjoy unrestricted access to any property or premises used or held by State organs or public entities covered by Article 229(4) of the Constitution and subject to audit under the Act.

“It was therefore not possible to validate the data used for disbursement of subsidies to schools,” she confirmed.

“In the circumstances, the accuracy and validity of subsidies to Public Corporations of Sh59,541,584,343 could not be confirmed.”

Ms Gathungu said the ministry disbursed a total of Sh57.01 billion as a subsidy for free day secondary school.

She said although the management of the schools receiving subsidy funds are required to upload an acknowledgement receipt in the Nemis system as evidence of the funds in the school’s bank account, none of the listed schools raised an acknowledgement receipt in the system.

“Further, the disbursement schedule included payments amounting to Sh137,084,111 made to 225 secondary schools whose bank account numbers format differed significantly from the format of bank accounts for banks supported by the national banking system,” she said.

The auditor said there were no confirmation receipts from the benefiting schools. “It was therefore not possible to confirm whether the schools’ bank account numbers were correctly captured and the concerned schools received the funds,” she said.

On the capitation, Ms Gathungu said the disbursement report provided for audit verification including Sh8.3 million that was disbursed to schools that had the same bank account numbers even though the names and sub-county of the schools were different indicating an error in the funds’ transmission.

The anomaly was not explained and there was no evidence of refunds provided to indicate the correction of the error, Ms Gathungu said.

She also flagged a disbursement of Sh638,435,316 to secondary schools in October 2020 that comprised transfers to 3,808 schools in respect of operation account and 3,810 schools in respect of tuition account.

“Although the management (ministry) explained the amounts were as a result of some schools that had not received their earlier capitation monies for reasons that they had not updated form one admissions data in the NEMIS system together with unexplained loss of data in the system, the basis of identification of the beneficiary schools was not supported by any documentation in form of claims from the benefiting schools or evidenced by any duly approved management report or exception report from the system to indicate that the benefiting schools had not received the earlier disbursement,” she said.

The auditor said a sample of the school included on the list receiving the disbursement had been included in the schools that had received their regular disbursement on time and therefore the payment was a duplication. Ms Gathungu said the ministry did not explain the anomaly.

In addition, Ms Gathungu said payments made to 31 schools were made to the bank account whose format did not conform to the national banking system of coding.

She also raised the red flag on an amount of Sh22,140,000 paid to 82 secondary schools in the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) areas to support the needy students in the ASALs.

Ms Gathungu said no documentation was provided to support the basis of identification of the needy schools.

The Auditor General of the republic of kenya, Nancy Gathungu has blamed the Ministry of Education for doing very little in regard to providing directions on how Guidance and Counseling (G&C) should be carried out in schools.

The Performance Audit Report on Fire Safety Performance in Secondary Schools by the Ministry of Education dated September 2020 revealed that despite the Ministry establishing a GC department at the headquarters, the department had only two staff.

The audit, which sampled 42 schools in five counties based on the prevalence of fire incidences between 2015 and 2019, revealed that the understaffing at the Ministry’s G&C department undermined the effectiveness of administration of guidance and counseling in all schools in the country.

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The safety standard manual for schools of 2008 (section 6.9) requires guidance and counseling to be strengthened at school level through providing resources of creating a conducive environment for effective guidance and counseling.

The 2015 Basic Education Regulations necessitated the establishment of the G&C programme after the abolishment of corporal punishment and expulsion of students in 2001.

According to AG, most of fire incidences were as a result of indiscipline cases hence the need for guidance and counseling to act as essential corrective measure focusing on moral values and character formation of and counseling to act as essential effective measure focusing on moral values and character formation of the leaners.

Despite schools having G&C departments, the Ministry has not provided the Board of Management (BoM) members with policy guidelines and regulations on how guidance and counseling should be implemented.

This has therefore caused minimal impact in reducing indiscipline cases in schools. “Guidance and Counseling teachers are still in need of professional training so as to be effective in providing this crucial service in the schools,” noted Auditor General Nancy Gathungu in the report signed on September 22, 2020.

From the 42 sampled schools, 31 schools didn’t have qualified teachers to offer G&C although 36 of the sampled schools (representing 85 per cent) were building their capacity by taking guidance and counseling teachers for short term courses in Guidance and Counseling. Teachers in 11 schools (6%) had a master’s degree in counseling, those in 2 schools (5%) had a diploma in guidance and counseling and those in 4 schools (9%) had a certificate in guidance and counseling.

The report also found that most schools lack private rooms where counselling sessions are conducted. For effective guidance and counseling, schools are required to have a secluded rooms and lockable cabinets for confidentiality of information.