It is the season of corruption in Kenya. And amidst the multi-billion corruption scandals that have rocked the government, it has now been revealed that Kenyans may have lost Sh. 2 billion to timber mafia and corrupt individuals at the Kenya Forest Service.
According to a shocking report appearing in Kenya’s leading newspaper, Daily Nation, individuals quoted absurd figures for trees.
In some cases, a single tree seedling was bought at Sh. 20,000!
The report on the tree planting scandal says:
“When the task force asked for evidence of this exercise, it was given a report that indicated that more than 205 schools have been covered by the programme, with “over 100,000 trees” planted. That means every school had tree nurseries worth Sh. 10 million. Either that, or taxpayers used almost Sh. 20,000 for every tree planted.”
The cash was looted following the launching of a project by President Uhuru that was supposed to green public schools.
These revelations are contained in a confidential report by the recent task force that inquired into forest resource management and logging activities in the country.
The money was meant to finance training of children on tree planting, creation of nurseries in public primary schools, and a countrywide initiative to turn 10 per cent of all primary school land into forests.
The Daily Nation reports:
“The green schools project was a partnership between the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources and the Kenya Forest Service, and was supposed to cover all the 47 counties. However, sources told us that while the project was to be co-ordinated by KFS and presided over by its top officials and other senior officers from the ministry, the huge amounts of money involved turned it into a battleground as officers fought to take charge, leading to acrimony and embezzlement on a massive scale.
A forest officer is also under investigation for allocating trees worth Sh. 30 million to a sawmiller who never remitted the money to the government, an indicator of how the cartels have turned the country’s forest resources into a cash cow.
The task force was also told in camera that KFS senior officials used their influence to “discipline staff who queried irregularities in the service or those who refused to ‘cooperate’ in supporting malpractices”.
One of the deputy directors of the forest service is under investigation for using two casuals “to undertake cash transactions on his behalf”. One of the casuals had worked at KFS for six years before his contract was terminated at the end of January this year, while the other is now a whistle-blower.
The task force was told that the two casuals would receive money from the deputy director to deposit in their accounts, and then send it to the director via M-Pesa.
“Some money was also deposited directly to the deputy director’s number through an M-Pesa shop at the headquarters,” notes the task force report.”