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Summary US has terminated funding for a $20m project to develop a Pakistani version of Sesame Street.
US has confirmed that funding for Sesame Street in Pakistan was withdrawn because of fraud allegations.During a briefing Tuesday, the US State Departments deputy spokesman, Mark Toner was asked about media reports about withdrawal of funding and whether it was indeed a matter of corruption in the theater company that was producing it, because the company itself had claimed that the USAID simply ran out of money for it. The official denied the companys claim and confirmed that it was on account of alleged corruption, for which an inquiry was underway too.Look, what happened here was there’s an anti-fraud hotline that was set up by the US Agency for International Development in Pakistan. And we did receive via that hotline what we believe were credible allegations of fraud and abuse by the Rafi Peer Theater Workshop, which is the workshop – theater workshop that manages the Sesame Street program in Pakistan. So we did launch an investigation into the allegations. We’ve also sent the theater workshop a letter that terminates the project agreement, he explained.About the scope or this allegation that we ran out of money. The initial agreement between USAID and the Rafi Peer Theater Workshop was for $20 million, of which 6.7 million has been spent as of the last fiscal quarter ending March 31st. So there is an investigation underway looking at these allegations. No one’s questioning obviously the value and positive impact of this kind of programming for children, but this is – again, as I said, this is about allegations of corruption, Toner said while further contradicting that this was about the shortage of funds.When specifically asked whether the theater group was not going to get the remaining amount of the originally promised 20 million dollars now, the deputy spokesman conceded that this was indeed the case. He was unsure if the United States would have the right to get the disbursed money back. As I said, there’s an investigation underway. We’ll wait for the results of that investigation, he stated.On another question seeking clarification as to how has the US decided to terminate the agreement, if the results of the investigation were not back yet and they did not know what it was actually wrong, he said the allegations were serious enough. Again, we deemed that the allegations were serious enough that we wanted to suspend or cut off the program until we were able to complete this investigation. Because we take misuse and misspending of US taxpayer dollars very seriously, he pointed out.The US State Departments deputy spokesperson was asked again and again about the nature of the fraud, but he refused to divulge any details. We do acknowledge the programming is beneficial, but we had what we believe were credible allegations, so rather than continue to throw good money after bad, we thought it was prudent to cut off this program and wait for the results of the investigation, he asserted.- Contributed by Awais Saleem, Dunya News correspondent in Washington, DC
