EDITORIAL: Take action against all looters of public funds

The greatest challenge the country has to grapple with is corruption. Every so often, the government makes commitments to deal with the vice and at times embarks on a string of arrests of those suspected of stealing from the public. However, the cases are hardly pursued to their logical end. Few people have been committed to jail for graft. Fewer still have had been forced to forfeit their stolen wealth. The end result is a cycle of theft from the public.

But the culture of stealing is not confined to government resources; it’s extended to loans and grants from donors, and which the public has eventually to pay for. Nothing is as painful as paying back money that never benefited the citizens. Moreover, it sends very negative signals to the international community that Kenya is not a country to do business with. That has the spiral effect of locking taps for potential foreign cash.

This week, we published a report by the World Bank that highlights how billions of grants earmarked for health and specifically HIV/Aids and reproductive health, free primary education and transport were squandered by a cartel of government officials working in cahoots with some non-governmental organisations. The grant under review was given under the administration of former President Kibaki, but the audit details have just come out now.

That in itself reveals two things. The first is that the culprits have well understood the fact that audits take too long to come out and so it is easy to steal and escape without being caught. Two, the fact the bank’s local office had denied the scam shows that either some of the officials were complicit or it did not have the capacity to detect the irregularities. Both propositions are worrisome.

What is disturbing is the serial occurrence of such cases and lethargy in taking action. Just the other day, Health ministry was in the spotlight for misuse of some Sh1.3 billion from the World Bank that had been given to fight the coronavirus. The government has received billions of shillings from bilateral and multilateral donors and, given our history, there is every reason to fear that the bulk of the money may not be put to proper use.

For now, the bank should give the Kenya Government details of the investigations to provide the basis for further probes locally with the view of seizing the suspects and charging them in court. Second, the bank should also do self-search to determine if its systems are porous and deal with that. But we need action on those perennially stealing public funds.