The United Kingdom has urged the Kenyan government to prosecute the officials involved in the misuse of donor funds given to the African country’s education ministry for the purchase and delivery of text books.
The U.K. government also wants to recover its contribution to the program.
“We want to see the people who stole this money forced to pay it back. This is a huge amount of money and I think it equates to something like two textbooks for every single school child in the country,” Capital News quotes Rob Macaire, the British high commissioner to Kenya. “It’s absolutely shocking that civil servants entrusted with the education of Kenya’s children should steal that money.”
Macaire’s remarks were in reaction to the release of an audit conducted by the Kenyan government, which showed that corrupt officials of the country’s health and education ministries stole some 4.2 billion Kenyan schillings ($47.6 million) worth of donor funds from 2005 to 2009.
The United Kingdom said it will continue providing education aid to Kenya, but that none of its assistance would be coursed through government channels, the Irish Times notes.
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