Probe on Sh70m for poor pupils hits a snag

Siaya County Assembly in session. County executives Mary Omondi (Education) and Richard Mungla (Finance) appeared before the Assembly's public accounts committee to respond to an audit query on the bursary fund. [File, Standard]

A probe on suspected loss of more than Sh70 million bursary funds in Siaya County failed to kick off yesterday due to lack of accounting documents. 

County executives Mary Omondi (Education) and Richard Mungla (Finance) appeared before the County Assembly's public accounts committee on Monday to respond to an audit query on the bursary fund.

The auditor general's report for the financial years 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 indicated that beneficiaries of the bursary funds could not be authenticated.

The ward reps wanted the two executives to furnish the committee with the list of beneficiaries and the exact figure of monies paid out.

"The two county executives are yet to give their responses to the auditor general for verification making it very difficult to establish exactly how much we might have lost," said the committee's chairman, William Kenyanyi (Yala Township).

The ward reps claimed the disbursement of the bursary has been shambolic for two consecutive years, citing cases where there was no evidence of beneficiaries.

"We have cases of schools with 200 pupils while the audit queries indicate that bursaries were given to 600 children," he said.

But the two executives told the committee that some of the documents required could not be traced following a change of leadership in their departments.

"We are new in these departments; there were people before us and some of the information you want you might not get from us," said Ms Omondi.

The ward reps will meet again today to discuss the matter.