WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The United States has cancelled funding for Pakistan’s version of the children’s television series “Sesame Street,” saying yesterday it had received credible allegations of fraud and corruption in the production of the popular Muppet program.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had contracted with Pakistan’s Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop to produce the local version of “Sesame Street,” had been notified of the corruption charges through an anti-fraud hotline.
“We did launch an investigation into the allegations. We also sent the theater workshop a letter that terminates the project agreement,” Toner told a news briefing.
“No one is questioning, obviously, the value and positive impact of this kind of programming for children. But this is about allegations of corruption,” he said.
The U.S. decision to cancel funding for the program comes amid unrelenting tension between Islamabad and Washington, which are locked in a cycle of deepening mistrust over U.S. drone strikes, Pakistan’s closure of NATO supply lines into Afghanistan and other disputes.
Toner said USAID had originally allocated $20 million to produce the show — which premiered in late 2011 and is known as “Sim Sim Hamara” in Pakistan — and that about $6.7 million of this had already been spent.
The rest of the money has been terminated even though the investigation is still under way, Toner said.
“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 U.S. taxpayer dollars very seriously,” he said.
