Safaricom ordered to refund amount charged on KCPE SMSs request

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Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom have been ordered to refund any monies charged to parents while they were trying to get Kenya Certificate Primary Education [KCPE] and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education [KCSE] results for their children in the previous examinations

Appearing before parliamentary committee on Education at Jomo Kenyatta Foundation during the fact finding mission, Education Permanent Secretary Dr Belio Kipsang’ requested until tomorrow to confirm with the telecos if they charged any premiums

Members of Parliament had put spirited efforts wanting to know why telecos charge a lot of monies Ksh 25.00 whereas other normal Short Messages goes at Ksh5.00, demanding the reversion to optimal charges 

The committee chaired by Tinderet Member of Parliament Julius Melly, were aggrieved why the telecos failed deliberately to sent results on several attempts and if there was any conspiracy to dupe Kenyans their hard earned coins

“Why do Safaricom charge 25 bob per message whereas normal messages are charged at 5 bob. Isn’t this unfair? Melly questioned 

He requested the Ministry of Education through PS Dr Kipsang’ to have a different arrangements where the latter said premiums are charged differently from normal SMSs owing to the fact of customization to all over million students countrywide 

During the mission at Jomo Kenyatta Foundation Headquarters, official from KNEC took through parliamentarians how Optical Mark Recognition [OMR] machines that are used to mark exams have been operating since 2015

Officials led by PS told MPs that within one minute the machine fitted electronically, recognizes 256 exam sheets with 99.9 percentum of marginal errors

In their submissions, all the 1,406,557 candidates set for 2022 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education, only less than 1000 of marginal errors which were rectified during five days window for validation and subsequent school’s follow-ups

According to PS, errors have been minimized from over 12000 in the year 2015/2016 to merely less than  thousand which guarantees students of one hundred percent of the recognition machines 

The information comes after a backdrop of public outcry where there were reported irregularities in awarding of marks to some school centres whereas others reporting their best performing candidates performed dismally 

The committee assured the Ministry and the council that they are committed to ensure quality and sanctity of education systems in kenya without any undue manipulation by whichever quarters 

According to documents tabled before the parliamentary committee KNEC collected Kshs 55, 403, 870 in 2022, Kshs54, 099, 405 in 2021 and Kshs 49, 759, 212 in 2020 respectively

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