Graft in schools stunts the nation
While graft by political office-holders is an outrightly dishonest act that betrays public trust, corruption by schools and the education system is a dishonourable act that robs children of their rights and welfare and it should be treated as a serious crime. Recently, a Facebook page of residents in Surat Thani exposed a story of young students being robbed of normal decent lunch. It shared photos of children at a public school having fermented rice noodle mixed with only fish sauce for lunch.
A lunch budget of 20 baht per head provided to this school by the Department of Local Administration may not be much, but it is more than enough to provide healthier and more decent meals for students. The story has gone viral, sparking anger by parents and triggering protest against the school director.
Apart from the alleged corruption in the lunch programme, parents have also claimed there are irregularities in several projects at the school, including construction of a building, repairs of teachers’ houses and electricity system improvement. The local education agency has transferred the director to an inactive post pending an investigation. After exposure of the scandal, probes have been launched into other schools. Early results suggest there are likely similar problems in several other schools.
This is not the first time irregularities in a school lunch budget were detected. Two years ago, corruption was found in two schools in northern Phrae province where cooks were hired to prepare lunch but the actual money paid to them was lower than that reported schools’ financial reports.
In fact, school lunch is not the only place where corrupt people exploit children’s welfare and benefits.
In recent years, there have been several reports about corruption across the education system — from student uniform subsidy schemes to school milk schemes, and from a project that lends textbooks to students to a state subsidy programme for private schools. The recent case is embezzlement in the Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund (Sema Life Development) that provides assistance for poor female students.
These corrupt practices are tantamount to robbing students and damaging their life and future.
For example, the Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund aims to reduce poor girls’ vulnerability to human trafficking and other crimes. It provides disadvantaged girls with a scholarship of 3,000 baht each per year for enrolment in secondary school. However, at least 88 million baht was embezzled by education authorities. That means several girls might have become victims of human trafficking.
While Thailand has become an ageing society and will be an aged society in the near future, children are key forces in the nation’s development. Instead of taking care of them, many authorities hurt them through corrupt activities.
[Corruption] is a crime damaging lives of the future generation of the nation.
Worse still, corrupt practices by teachers and authorities have made the public give up hope in the future of the country’s education system which is already in no healthy state. Thailand is among the world’s top education spenders relative to GDP. But various educational tests and rankings have proven the money has failed to improve the quality of the country’s schools. Based on national and international tests in recent years, most Thai students’ scores were quite low and the situation has yet to improve.
The country is also laggard in taking care of its children. In the latest ranking released on June 1 by Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation, Thailand ranks 85th out of 175 countries in the End of Childhood Index which took a hard look at the events that rob children of their childhood.
Thailand’s ranking is far behind that of Singapore, which is ranked as the best country in the world for children to grow up in. It tied with reigning champion Slovenia as the first, followed by Norway (3rd), Sweden (4th), and Finland (5th). They perform well across the eight indicators: the under-five mortality rate, child stunting, out-of-school children and youth, child labour, child marriage, adolescent birth rate, population displaced by conflict, and child homicide rate. Most of them have something in common: transparency, good governance and much less corruption.
Corruption in the education system and schools is not acceptable. It is not only a matter of enriching oneself by siphoning money meant for public causes, but it a crime damaging the lives of the future generation of the nation.
In the Sema Phatthana Chiwit Fund embezzlement case, a senior education official was fired for severe malfeasance. In the case of alleged school lunch corruption in Surat Thani, the director has initially faced severe disciplinary violations in connection with this and other irregularities.
Such “disciplinary actions” are not strong enough measures to punish those who robbed meals and other benefits from students. These corrupt practices should be treated as a crime in which penalty should be harsher.