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The row surrounding the Uasin Gishu county scholarship programme for students to Finland has taken another twist after a Kenyan petitioned both the Kenya and the Finland governments over claims of human trafficking in the name of education tourism.

According to Elizabeth Mokkonen, who is married to a Finnish citizen, many of the Kenyan students studying in Finland have been forced to engage in odd jobs including prostitution to survive.

In her petition, Mokkonen claims many of the students in Finland are living in deplorable conditions despite their parents selling property to raise fees.

“Families sold land, took loans to assist their children to come and study in Finland with lies from Kenyan agents plus their fake county representatives who made families to get into contracts they know nothing about,” Mokkonen says in her petition.

Suicide

She claims many of the students and their parents had no knowledge of the contracts they signed into which have since been hidden from them by their agents and partly by some of the county governments involved in the Finland education programme.

“What is inside these contracts? What were the students and their families signing for? Why hide these contracts? We need to give updates on the rot within and without the Finnish and Kenyan governments that led to a student committing suicide on the 18th April 2023 in Finland and many more left depressed and on the verge of death,” Mokkonen writes.

Uasin Gishu County Assembly ad-hoc committee which investigated the scholarship saga found out that three senior officers under Governor Jackson Mandago’s administration were responsible for the scholarship mess as they made themselves signatories of the fund to enrich themselves and withdrew millions of shillings on diverse dates.

According to Mokkonen, students and their families were made to pay between Sh170,000 and Sh220,000 per semester but were told that the government would be sponsoring them.

She says this had led to many of them getting into depression, some into prostitution, with one committing suicide.

The petition wants both the Kenya and Finland governments to unveil the faces behind the so-called agents who allegedly benefited from the money as students suffer.

People Daily established that 10 nursing students out of the 25 who are currently pursuing training in Finland have been issued with a 30-day notice of termination of programme for failing to pay fees.

According to the Uasin Gishu County government, the first group of 202 students who went to Finland left Kenya between September 2021 and September 2022 with 111 going to Tampere University, Jvaskyla (25), while 66 went to Laurea University.

In the arrangement, each parent managed to raise Sh1.19 million as school fees for the county government to ensure that they were placed at the universities.

Abuse of office

The parents also raised Sh100,000 (air ticket), three months accommodation (Sh80,000), insurance (Sh30,000), visa (Sh49,000) and Covid certificate Sh5,000.

However, months later, cracks are emerging in the programme with many students risking being deported after the devolved unit failed to channel the money into the various universities accounts as per the agreement with the parents.

Documents in possession of People Daily indicate that fees for the second semester in other universities in Finland were due on March 31 while the due date for Tampere University had lapsed.

Among others, the Uasin Gishu County Assembly ad-hoc committee has recommended that the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) carry out a probe into forgery, abuse of office and integrity of county officers who served under Mandago’s administration.