Economy under threat as government loses fight against corruption

But the happenings at the education sector are not the only scandals dogging the government.

The Agriculture ministry is also under the spotlight over the selling of subsidized maize to private millers.

President Kibaki suspended top officials of that ministry to pave way for investigations.

These are but a few of the recent scandals that have emerged to deal a body blow to the government’s effort to eradicate graft in its ranks.

Lands PS Dorothy Angote says some civil servants are giving the government a bad name.

Recently, the PS and a team of senior officials raided several offices at Ardhi House in which about 12,000 files that were presumed to be missing were recovered.

The whereabouts of 30,000 other files containing crucial details on land are yet to be established.

“This Ministry is in a serious crisis of confidence” Ms Angote told the civil servants and warned that the era of public servants assuming they were indispensable is over.

KACC believes that politicians and seniors civil servants have trained their eyes on the 2012 general elections and that has triggered graft which is precipitating the scandals.

“We are losing the momentum in the fight against corruption because of the 2012 general elections. Some politicians and civil servants are busy signing away contracts now in the belief that it will give them money for the campaigns,” says Mr Shollei.

Even though there is no concrete data over corruption in Kenya, KACC believes that over 30,000 cases of graft have been reported over the last five years but there could be nearly a million cases of corruption that occur annually with most going unreported.

What is pushing down the in the fight against corruption, points analysts is the will to prosecute corrupt individuals and to forcibly recover funds that have been embezzled by civil servants, all of whom operate in disregard to the Public Officers Ethics Act.

The recent corruption scandals that have wiped out billions of shillings of tax payers’ money have exposed the weaknesses of the oversight institutions and put to question the existence of KACC and the National Anti Corruption Campaign Steering Committee which enjoy a cumulative allocation averaging Sh1.4 billion every year.

Over the years, the government has instituted several legal interventions aimed at tackling graft, but most analysts say these efforts have come failed as Kenya continues to sink deeper into vice.

Some of the legislated interventions put up by government in the belief that it would enhance the country’s moral standing include the establishment of the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1956, the establishment of the Anti- Corruption Police Squad in 1997, the establishment of the Kenya Anti- Corruption Authority in 1999 and the establishment of the Anti-corruption Police Unit in the 1990s.