You can�t be serious Mr Mooko

Mmegi Editor | Wednesday May 25, 2016 13:54

Mooko said this when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee  (PAC) to explain the ministry’s expenditure for the 2015-2016 financial year. Mooko revealed that the Department of Tertiary Education Financing (DTEF) is owed P2.4 billion by former students who are now working or are somewhere in the society.

Seriously, the PS and MoESD cannot be allowed to take the public for a fool, claiming ignorant of who owes the government, the taxpayer, monies they were lent to further their studies.  Of course, some may have long passed on without settling their debt to the nation, whilst others could be living large and abroad at the expense of poor Batswana. The amount that the DTEF is owed is more than enough to sponsor potential beneficiaries for tertiary education for at least three years. It is therefore, a source of concern when an officer says that their records are missing and they are unable to trace the debtors.

An excuse of missing records should not be allowed in any organisation, particularly a government department tasked with taking care of national resources. The MoESD is allocated a huge chunk of finances annually to spend on educating Batswana to feed the much needed skills into the economy, such as engineers, technicians, teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists, accountants and other skills that are necessary for the growth of the economy.  The excuse raised by the PS gives rise to suspicions of corruption in the DTEF especially that the department has in the past been associated with ghost students and other maladministration practices that cost the taxpayer millions of pula. 

Surprisingly, other sections of government departments are doing good work for the benefit of the country, as the alcohol levy collection, tax collection, and the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security (MDJS), which tracks motorists charged with drunken driving until they are convicted by courts. The defence ministry goes an extra mile to publish the names of the convicts in the government Daily News.

Perhaps the MoESD should benchmark against their counterparts at MDJS and adopt the enthusiasm with which they do their work and we will definitely be assured of debt collection.  We hope that other government institutions mandated to protect the country’s resources will show interest in assisting DTEF to recover the missing records and the money. The DTEF should also find better ways to manage their records to ensure that the same problems are not encountered with the current group of students in tertiary institutions when they graduate and get absorbed into the job market. Failure to find new ways will obviously make the sponsorship unsustainable. We also urge those who know they have not repaid their sponsorship to show up and pay up. 

Today’s thought 

“Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results, is the definition of crazy.” 

- Unknown