The Ministry of Health has been depositing millions of money collected from Kenyans to fund the Social Health Authority (SHA) in secret accounts owned by private companies. This has been revealed by the Auditor General Nancy Gathungu in a shocking report that has exposed how the SHA money is wired in a web of mystery.
According to the report by the Auditor General, the three private companies include Safaricom PLC, Konvergence Solutions, and Apiero Limited. The three are the companies that were contracted to establish the Sh104.8 billion Integrated Healthcare Information Technology System (IHTS).
They have been receiving daily remittances from the health ministry through an escrow account. According to Investopedia, an escrow account is refers to the legal concept where assets or money are held by a third party on behalf of two other parties that are in the process of completing a transaction.
Alarmingly, though, the agreement between the government and the three contracted firms does not disclose details on the signatories to the account. The consortium has been charging fees from Kenyans making contributions to the system at rates of 2.5 percent for claims from health facilities, 5 percent and 1.5 percent for track and trace solutions.
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The damning report by the Auditor General has further revealed that the government does not own the SHA health system and has been operating the system vaguely. Apparently, the contract declares that the ownership of the SHA system, its components, and all intellectual property rights shall remain in the ownership of the consortium.
“The ownership of the system, system components, and all intellectual property rights shall remain in the ownership of the consortium,” the report states.
Incidentally, this report has come out in the wake of a related report on the eCitizen system which revealed that the government does not also own the eCitizen system that has been collecting billions of public funds and invoicing for commissions.
