Government says it will recover the K19.5 million stolen donor money

GOVERNMENT says it will recover the K19.5 million donor aid that was misapplied at the Ministry of General Education.Acting General Education Minister Vincent Mwale told parliament yesterday that all the 80 staff members that were suspended for misapplication of the donor aid in question are from the ministry headquarters.“Mr Speaker in accordance with the laid down procedures, where we have to recover, we have to recover and in where people have to be punished by going to jail and so on where there is no requirements for us to recover, everything is laid down in the procedures and in the Public Finance Act. Definitely if we need to recover, we will have to recover from the benefits and anything that may be outstanding within the ministry that’s due to them,” Mwale said.He also disclosed that among the 80 officers that were suspended include some internal auditors.“Mr Speaker I can confirm that yes some internal auditors were involved in that they did not do their work to prevent this from happening. They are also on suspension,” he said.And Mwale said donors have withheld funding to the ministry until the problem is resolved.“Mr Speaker yes I can confirm that funding has been withheld to the ministry to just make sure that we did our work to clean up these things and make sure that those that were involved in embezzlement and misappropriations and so on were dealt with accordingly and that after all that was done, we could talk about how they could resume to give financial assistance to the ministry,” said Mwale. Post Views: 3