MoESD to pay allowances for 20,000 students
Bame Piet | Thursday March 10, 2016 16:31
“This unprecedented development was mainly caused by tendering processes involved in the disbursement of the allowances. You will remember that Target 20,000 project was introduced in September 2015 to equip unskilled youth with strategic TVET skills for their personal survival in the job market and to support ESP with skills.
We had to implement it immediately,” said assistant minister of education Fidelis Molao. He told parliament yesterday the main challenge was issuance of funds for tuition and student allowances adding that tuition fees are being paid to the training institutions.
“The snag is with disbursement of students’ allowances, where we experience delay as a result of the tendering process that we had to follow because of the huge amounts involved,” he said.
The assistant minister revealed that 14,869 students have already enrolled in various institutions across the country for both short and long term programmes and their allowances should be disbursed through an efficient and flawless system. He said that the system currently in use should be extended to accommodate the 20,000.
‘This, we realised late, that it requires some modifications and more importantly adjustments of the current contract with the dispenser,’ he said appealing for patience from the concerned students.
He assured Parliament that the ministry would have paid the allowances by end of this month, together with the arrears.