Government doesn�t care about UB

Mmegi Editor | Wednesday June 7, 2017 11:55

In November last year, we learnt that the institution has been battling under-funding from the Government for seven years. This was disclosed by the former vice chancellor Professor Thabo Fako, when he appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Statutory Bodies. Fako painted a gloomy picture saying UB needed at least P1 billion in urgent funding. He said the situation was untenable.

Fast forward to this month. We learnt this week that the Government is still crippling the UB by not paying tuition fees after it surfaced that the institution is now owed about P500 million.

It is now clear that the Government does not care about the welfare of the UB. Why the Government is trying to kill the University we do not know. It might be true that they are doing that deliberately to empower some private learning institutions.

It has been said countless times that some of these private learning institutions offer deplorable services and should be sent packing. The owners of these schools are only interested in making a quick buck out of the Government of Botswana. They do not care about the quality of the education they offer. The less said about some of the graduates from these schools the better. The Government is doing nothing about this said state of affairs taking place in the private institutions. Instead, the Government continues to spend a lot of money on these institutions.

We have written here before that the top Government officials do not care about the quality of education at these private institutions because their children attend are sent abroad for world class education.

These top dogs can afford to pay from their pockets for quality education of their children in Europe and United States of America.

If we do not do something about the situation at the UB, one day we will wake up to the closure of the institution. We canot afford the death of this premier institution just because some few individuals with interests in private institutions stand to benefit. We do not think the Government would like that to happen to the UB. Please pay the UB tuition fees to normalise the situation.

Otherwise history will judge the current Government very harshly. We do not think the leadership at the Government Enclave wants to be remember as people did not value education at all, but it is an open secret that they do not care about the state of affairs at the UB.

Today’s thought

“As an institution of knowledge, we want decisions to be informed not based on assumptions.” 

 – Professor Thabo Fako