NAIROBI, Feb 2 (AFP) - Government corruption in Kenya is threatening the disbursement of millions of dollars in foreign aid to fight HIV/AIDS, the US ambassador to the east African nation said in comments released on Wednesday.
The envoy, William Bellamy, said graft was a primary reason that only a fraction of the 70 million dollars the United States allocated for anti-AIDS programs in Kenya last year had been spent and that other donors were equally leary of contributing until the problem was fixed.
"The government of Kenya must change how it spends the money it already has and it must insist on obtaining results from that spending," Bellamy said in a speech on Tuesday to mark the opening of an infectious disease center here.
He said millions of dollars in World Bank funds and tens of millions of dollars from the UN's Global Aids Fund are currently available for anti-AIDS efforts in Kenya but remain unspent due to donor concerns.
"Let's be clear, the money is available, and it has been available for quite some time now," he said in unusually blunt remarks to an audience that included Kenyan Vice President Moody Awori.
"What remains is for the Government of Kenya to use that money quickly and effectively," Bellamy said, before turning to address Awori.
"I... urge you again to use all your influence to get this government to start spending responsibly the funds it already has to fight AIDS," he told the vice president.
Chief among Bellamy's complaints was a study that found Kenya's health ministry was spending more than 500 million shillings (6.5 million dollars, five million euros) a year to pay ghost workers.
"It is not too much to ask that the ministry stop paying for these unoccupied positions and redirect that funding to real people in real positions," he said.
AIDS has killed about 1.5 million people in Kenya since 1984, according to the government which says the national infection rate dropped from 14 percent in 2000 to seven percent in 2004 (from 2.5 million AIDS patients to about 1.4 million).
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