More than 30 billion won in education finance grants (subsidies) provided by the government to city and provincial education offices were found to have been used improperly.

The Office of the National Coordinating Council said on Oct. 6 that the government’s Joint Corruption Prevention Task Force conducted a joint inspection with the Ministry of Education on the operation of ‘local education finance’ at 17 city and provincial education offices nationwide from October last year to last month, and found a total of 97 cases of abuse and waste. The amount is 28.2 billion won.

In the case of the ‘Green Smart Future School Transformation Project’ operating cost budget, it was found that it was used inappropriately. A total of 370 million won was spent on musicals for school staff, training fees for barista certification, and late-night chicken orders.

The Green Smart Future School project was promoted by the previous Moon Jae-in administration, which transformed 2,835 old school buildings into state-of-the-art schools across the country. A budget of 20.3 trillion won has been invested in the project over the past five years.

As part of the project, Seoul A Middle School and Chungnam B Elementary School spent 7 million won and 4 million won, respectively, for staff musicals. Staff at Gyeonggi C High School spent 2.2 million won on 10 barista certification training sessions from July to September last year.

In addition, Incheon D High School ordered 210,000 won worth of chicken at 11 p.m., and Gyeongnam E High School spent 2.9 million won on sonic electric toothbrushes.

Regarding the educational facility environment improvement project, a total of 3.3 billion won (45 cases) of improper execution was discovered. In the main case메이저놀이터, a total of eight education offices included VAT when paying for construction services for faculty and staff buildings, which are exempt from VAT. As a result, VAT was overpaid on 49 projects totaling about 3 billion won.

In a sample check of 14 construction projects worth more than 500 million won at private schools under the jurisdiction of the E Education Office, a total of 190 million won was overestimated when calculating the amount of glass needed for window construction. In addition, 29 schools in five districts spent 340 million won ($35 million) to replace bookcases that had not reached their useful life (eight years) without proper procedures.

In the process of providing goods to North Korea through the Inter-Korean Educational Exchange and Cooperation Fund, violations of contract laws and fraudulent settlements were also found. In two service contracts worth 1.4 billion won in 2021 and 300 million won in 2022, the Ministry of Education repeatedly signed one-person contracts with certain organizations to transport humanitarian aid supplies. In addition, it was found that the container used to transport the goods was purchased for about 80 million won, but was falsely settled as a long-term lease.

A case of misappropriation of the Educational Facility Environment Improvement Fund was also discovered. Instead of carrying over unused general budget continuation expenses, the agency transferred and appropriated them to the Education Facility Environment Improvement Fund and reallocated them to the general budget. The agency received an additional 7.5 billion won in incentives in the 2023 budget by achieving the ‘fiscal execution efficiency incentive target’ (less than 4% unused ratio).

The Office of the Chief Cabinet Secretary explained, “The grant increased sharply from 41.1 trillion won in 2013 to 75.7 trillion won in 2023.” “It was necessary to check the efficient execution of the budget and the adequacy of fund accumulation,” he said.

He added, “We needed to check the efficient execution of the budget and the adequacy of fund accumulation.” He said that he would prepare improvement measures such as ▷ establishing a basis for the obligation to submit a green smart future school project implementation plan ▷ establishing a system that can be settled when the proof of purposeful project expenses is confirmed ▷ establishing an analysis index of fund operation status ▷ producing and distributing a’business manual’ related to the environmental improvement project for educational facilities.