Millions of Shillings Embezzled as Engineers, Education Stakeholders in Maracha District Forced Teachers to Sign BoQ and Agreement.

The Resident District Commissioner (RDC) for Maracha District Mr Ayikobua Festus, Deputy RDC Mrs Coliba Kotevu Monica and the District Internal Security Officer (DISO) Mr Surundu Samuel in fulfillment of their constitutional mandate spent the whole of 27-5-2022 in supervising primary schools in Maracha District.

This follows complaints from whistleblowers, who, through this online publication blog team raised their concerns about possible corruption scandals in the District and Schools.

Recently, Government allocated some monies for the Districts through the Education department.

The Permanent Secretary earlier on wrote a letter directing the DEO, District Engineers to involve Head Teachers, SMCs in the process of drafting a plan for the classroom blocks to be renovated and District officials are supposed to just approve the plans.

To the contrary, the District officials from Engineering and Education came in with their plans and forcefully imposed it on the Headmasters, Teachers & SMCs to accept and sign.

Out of 62 primary schools in Maracha District, we managed to inspect 9 Schools on 27-5-2022 and we also spoke with their Teachers and School management committees (SMCs).

Shillings 10,833,000 Allocated to Mbaffe Primary School in Oleba Town Council.

We begun our first inspection at Mbafe primary school in Oleba Town Council.

The deputy head teacher Mbaffe primary school said, the Contractor, Engineers and some heads of Education department in the District only came to inform them about a planned renovation project to be implemented in the school.

They didn't give them scope of the work and which classroom blocks to be renovated.

To the dismay of the Teachers / SMCs at Mbaffe primary, the contractor together with his team came and decided to renovate a classroom block which is of a good condition.

After finishing, they asked the Teachers to sign on the Agreement / BoQ.

Shillings 8,600,000 was Allocated for Retriko Primary School.

In Retriko primary school, the Headmaster, teachers and the SMCs informed us that, they firmly disagreed with the Engineering and Education officials from the District who were imposing the renovation plan on to them.

Henceforth, no single money out of the 8,600,000 Shs for Retriko primary school has been spent.

Shillings 12,930,000 was Allocated for Oribani Primary School in Okokoro Town Council (formerly Kijomoro Sub-county).

At this school, we were briefed of an awkward act, where some District officials forced the teachers to sign on the BoQ Agreement after the contractor painted less than six class rooms at a cost of 12 million shillings.

Shillings 11,762,000 was Allocated for Oleba Primary School in Oleba Sub-County.

The next school we supervised was Oleba Primary School whose budget was 11 million schillings.

Here, we discovered, the contractor just like the contractor of other schools, went ahead to renovate a new class room building!

When we read through the BoQ, we were amused to see the contractor drafted a BoQ that includes “Site Clearance” whose budget is over 200,000 Shs despite the fact that, Oleba primary school has a clean compound and the building they chose to renovate is a bit newer than other class room buildings in that school.

Shillings 9,211,000 was Allocated for Andeni Primary School in Oluvu Sub-County.

We proceeded to Andeni primary In Oluvu sub-county, where we were shocked to learn that, instead of demolishing the old cracked floors at the school, the contractor together with his team, only did screeding on three classrooms, they bought a few wooden desks to supplement their accountability for the 9million shillings.

On top of that, the management of Andeni Primary  told us, the contractor didn’t pay the cost of the laborers hired from the vicinity.

Shillings 12,900,000 was Allocated for Lamila Ciru Primary School in Okokoro Town Council.

On arrival at Lamila Ciru primary, the headmaster upon welcoming us, thanked us for coming.

He said, the contractor and other District officials drafted their own renovation plans, asked the Teachers / SMCs not to dictate to them on which classroom building they school renovate.

This particular contractor like the others, chose the latest building in the school and renovated it.

The BoQ of this contractor indicates that, they spent Shs 500,000” to rent a store for keeping the materials yet they contractor used one of the empty class rooms to keep those materials in.

Upon completion of the project, the contractor / engineers asked the headmaster of the school to pay to them shillings 800,000 after they planted 18 fruit seedlings (Mangoes) at the school compound, a money that has now remained as a debt on Lamila Ciru primary school.

In summary, screeding, forceful signatory and shoddy works were done in most of these primary schools in Maracha District that has resulted into loss of millions of shillings.

Up next, we are going to compile and publicize the BoQ for all the Schools and the Photos of the Works done in these schools.

Stay tuned.

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