| Punish officials behind Theft OF students’ cash | Send to a friend |
| Thursday, 26 January 2012 22:06 |
 The revelations on the fraud surrounding the students' loans involving officials with the Higher Education Students Loans Board (HESLB) and Mkwawa University College of Education (MUCE) are most shocking.For our struggling economy, funding education is a matter of life and death. As such, it is extremely disheartening when some government officials form syndicates for the purpose of stealing money meant for the education of our young from low-income families. The big question that arises from the aforesaid, thus, is: whatever happened to integrity among us? By all standards, the officials involved are among the highly paid government employees. So, what is it that has caused some of them to stoop so low as to steal funds that would go towards the eradication of ignorance, one of the three cardinal enemies of our development efforts? Honesty. It seems many among us have lost this human quality. It is no wonder, that whenever a person ascends to a certain position of authority, those around him expect him to get rich as quickly as possible, short of which they dub him a big fool. We no longer cherish honesty. On the other hand, the State can only justify its existence when it fulfills its responsibilities in the social contract. Among these include: protection of the people from whom it collects taxes, and make proper account of the expenditure. The fact that some officials managed to steal over Sh90 million of public money “just like that” shows that there are a lot of loopholes in what ought to have been virtually a foolproof public funds control mechanism. It is for this reason that the State must ensure safety of public coffers, if it is to demonstrate that it is accountable to its citizenry. We commend the Parliamentary Public Organisation Accounts Committee for uncovering the rot at Mkwawa and HESLB, plus the measures it has already taken, but things should not end there. The culprits behind the scam must pay for their crime. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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We just have not matured enough to understand that we cannot take what belongs to somebody else - no matter how poor we are.
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