Economy

Ouko cites poor planning in stalled Sh10bn Uhuru tree planting plans

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Auditor-General Edward Ouko. FILE PHOTO | NMG

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s ambitious plan to roll out a Sh8 billion tree planting programme in all public primary schools has achieved little progress due to poor planning and a lack of funding, Auditor-General Edward Ouko has said.

The Auditor-General wants the Ministry of Environment to establish a budget line exclusively to implement the Green Schools Programme (GSP) that was initiated by Mr Kenyatta in 2013.

Mr Ouko says although there was progress in the programme, the overall implementation of the project was unsatisfactory.

He said the planning and design of the initiative were not comprehensive as the ministry did not take into consideration the factors of funding and market surveys.

Mr Ouko said at the pilot phase of the project, the ministry and stakeholders had an ambitious plan to roll out the programme in 2,600 or 10 per cent of the 26,000 public schools in the 2013/14 financial year but were finally revised to 51 schools and implemented in 2014/15 financial year.

“The GSP has been fully implemented in only seven or 14 per cent of the 51 schools. The programme was scaled down due to the amount of funds allocated for implementation,” he said in the performance audit of the programme dated July 2017.

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“Consequently, the achievement of the targeted implementation in five years will be delayed since it was meant to be completed in 2018, yet the second phase has not even been initiated.”

The project aims to use school communities to expand the forest cover from the current seven to 10 per cent and inculcate tree planting among the youth.

Mr Kenyatta launched the project on December 7, 2013, at Muchinda Primary School in Nyandarua. It was to be rolled out to all public schools within a period of five years.

Mr Ouko said 931 schools were identified in the 2013/14 and 2014/15 financial years and an accompanying budget of Sh1 billion was developed. He said the number of schools was further revised down to 51 and another budget of Sh37,317,800 developed by the Kenya Forest Service (KFC), the implementing agency.

“The ministry disbursed Sh38,017,800 in two phases of Sh29.7 million and Sh8,317,800. An additional Sh1.85 billion was drawn from the annual vote of KFS to cater for the difference,” he said.