Education ministry broke
Baboki Kayawe | Friday September 2, 2016 18:00
Assistant minister Fidelis Molao, who met with teachers from Molepolole sub-region on Tuesday, to discuss a wide range of issues in the profession, said the ministry was running at a budget deficit of P1billion. He explained that this financial status was making it difficult for in-service training to materialise.
“The ministry is operating at zero budget for training. As we are grappling with in-service training people should consider to self-train and develop with institutions of distance learning such as the Botswana College of Open and Distance Learning,” Molao said. “We are really budget constrained. We had hoped to replicate the process that saw some of your colleagues sent to schools a few years ago but under the prevailing circumstances, we don’t see it happening anytime soon,” he added.
In the period 2012/2013, over 3,000 teachers were sent to upgrade qualifications at local institutions and within the SADC region.
Molao said as the ministry strived to improve quality, where possible teachers have to finance their studies with prior arrangement for reimbursement.
“Where possible let’s try to self improve in order to reduce the burden of budget constraints. But you need to first communicate plans to further studies so that an arrangement for reimbursement made when the financial situation we are facing abates,” he said. Molao said the fact that MoESD continues to be allocated the lion’s share of the budget at around 20% annually, that it employs about 38,000 workers, made the budget insufficient.
“People expect changes and results looking at the fact that we get the bulk of the money, little do they know that is just a drop in the ocean,” he said.
Under the 2016/2017 financial year, the department of teaching service management (under which in-service training falls), got P4.5 billion relative to the previous financial period’s P4.2 billion.
According to the 2016/2017 Estimates of Expenditure from the Consolidated and Development Funds, this area had an actual expenditure until March 2015 of P299, while a mere P10 was authorised for this service in the period 2015/2016, a trend that prevails in the 2016/2017 financial period.
Molao said the zero budget towards in-service training was a manifestation of the dwindling national financial resources and a lot of responsibilities falling under his ministry.
Of the annual budget provision, 55% goes to salaries, department of tertiary education financing gets 20%, 15% is allocated to parastatals that include Botswana Qualifications Authority, University of Botswana, Human Resource Development Council and Botswana International University of Science and Technology, while items such as textbook procurement, school feeds and others account for 10%.
It is against this background that he called on teachers to do their best under limited resources. Molao emphasised on cutting cost on overtime, and encouraged teachers and other employees in the ministry to stick to 14 hours of overtime, which must be authorised by supervisors.
“We are really struggling to keep up, so overtime work has to be absolutely necessary and it must be authorised,” he said.