By Tony Wafula
Former Bungoma governor Wycliffe Wangamati has rubbished a report by the taskforce formed by Governor Ken Lusaka to assess the former administration’s performance in the education sector.
Governor Lusaka deployed three task forces namely the Education Scholarship Audit Force, Human Resource Audit and Pending Bills Audit to assess the implementation of the Bungoma Education Scholarship funds, establish the status of the human resource and examine the eligibility of the pending bills.
Wangamati argues that implementation of the scholarship was done transparently and some students who benefitted from the kitty completed their secondary education while others are still in school.
The former governor stated that his administration allocated Ksh400 million towards the county scholarship kitty adding that before his exit from office they had only spent Ksh200 million.
Addressing the press on Monday at a hotel in Bungoma town, the former county boss affirmed that the vetting process was vigorous and involved home visitations with the help of primary school heads.
Some of the very needy cases who were not privy to the existence of the scholarships were identified and guided to apply immediately.
Wangamati says that even in cases where some applicants gave false information, members of the public often volunteered information that necessitated cross examination.
“Without governor Lusaka’s taskforce giving a list of names of students classified as “underserving” the wards they come from and the schools admitted to, it’s hard to vouch for the credibility of their findings,” Wangamati noted.
On claims that seven students had been transferred but their former schools continued to receive funds, Wangamati noted that the students applied for the scholarships based on the schools they were admitted to immediately after release of the KCPE results.
However, the former governor said that several sought transfer to schools other than those admitted to, adding that when this happens, the county advises parents to furnish the department of education with an admission letter to the new institution.
On governor Lusaka’s task force findings that the county paid fees for eleven students whose fees had been fully paid by other sponsors, Wangamati said that when KCPE results were released, needy cases made efforts to apply for several scholarship opportunities available including Equity’s wings to Fly, Co-operative Bank, KCB Bank, Family Bank, the national government’s Elimu Scholarship and the county’s own scholarship.
He added that usually there was time to reconcile and compare notes with other entities, noting that the 5th cohort, however, presented unique challenges due to the short period between release of results, application, award of scholarships and reporting time to school.
Wangamati said that the claims that his government lost Ksh19 million by paying fees for ghost students were outrageous and baseless.
“If the findings were not a hurried afterthought, the taskforce would have established that all the cases they refer to as ‘ghost students’ were in fact selected to those specific schools by the Ministry of Education’s Nemis system,” he said.
The former governor also said that the taskforce made careless and easy-to-spot mistakes where it got the fee structures of some schools wrong. For instance, it stated that Cardinal Otunga Girls’ school fees was Ksh. 45,000 instead of Ksh. 35,000.
