BQA fires employee, warns two
Innocent Selatlhwa | Wednesday January 25, 2017 16:56
“Quality assurance is like working in a bank. Whenever something happens we need to take immediate action. We have taken action against the officers who we were investigating. One has been expelled from work while the other two were given written warnings. Action will continue being taken,” he said.
Modungwa said with the introduction of new BQA regulations that will improve quality of teaching and learning in Botswana, they are introducing risk management, which will further strengthen their whistleblowing policy and ensure that whoever flouts it will be brought to book. Even though Modungwa would not go into detail, last year he told Mmegi’s sister publication The Monitor that there were allegations they may have not followed accreditation procedure, as they should have. He said they took it extremely serious, especially when complainants came with the evidence they had.
The Monitor last July reported that three quality assurance officials had been suspended for three months pending investigation. The trio was alleged to have flaunted procedure for registration and accreditation after certain colleges and universities exposed the BQA officials of corruption and bribery.
Sources alleged that these were exposed by tertiary institutions they had been doing favours for payment for compromising quality standards resulting in poor delivery at certain institutions.
It was alleged that the suspended BQA officials were in charge of investigating quality and standards of facilities at the various tertiary institutions. However, they would file glowing reports even in instances where things were out of hand. In many instances, experts’ reports were trashed, while in other instances, the officials chose not to be accompanied by an expert, as it is the requirement of BQA’s quality assurance rules.
Officials from various tertiary institutions were reported to have come one-by- one to spill the beans about the trio in what was the first exposé of its kind since BQA was established.