Kenya’s decision to drop the Kenya Red Cross Society and appointing Amref Kenya to manage funds for the fight against, malaria, HIV and TB has seen its application for Ksh12.4 billion rejected by Global Fund.
Global Fund indicates that at least two NGOs are needed in managing the funds and Kenya’s decision to drop Kenya Red Cross “lacked transparency”.
Kenya is now required to make a fresh application by Monday 5 pm.
“The process did not comply with the eligibility criteria of ensuring an open and transparent principal recipient selection process, based on clearly defined and objective criteria,” Global Fund said in its report dated September 7 and seen by the Star.
Global Fund has already allocated Kenya Ksh42 billion for the next two years which will begin in July 2021.
Of the Ksh42 billion, 70 percent will go to the Treasury while and the remaining 30 percent is channelled to a non-state principal recipient (an NGO) which then issue the grants to smaller NGOs.
Health PS Susan Mochache chairs a 23-member committee – Kenya Coordinating Mechanism (KCM) – which picks the non-state principal recipients.
KCM is all-inclusive and has members from the government, counties, NGO and the private sector.
There were reports that KCM elbowed Kenya Red Cross out as a non-state principal recipient and had Amref Kenya into the deal to manage the funds which Global Fund found unfair.
“The Global Fund recommends that the KCM cancels the non-state PR selection process as submitted to the Global Fund Secretariat on 31 August 2020 given the significant flaws noted in the financial evaluation part of the procurement process,” the Fund added.
Amref had applied to manage funds for all the three diseases while Red Cross applied to manage only for HIV and TB.