Banks to handle bursaries

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Wednesday March 9, 2011 00:00

 

The government is so determined about this move that authorites intend putting it into practice by the end of this financial year. The Minister of Education and Skills Development, Pelonomi Venson Moitoi said this in Parliament when presenting her Ministry's Committee of Supply speech on Monday afternoon.

The decision to transfer the issuing of bursaries to the local banks comes at a time when the Education Ministry is struggling to track thousands of students to repay their loans.

The Minister Venson-Moitoi says now government has adopted one of the recommendations that calls for outsourcing of student sponsorship management to existing financial institutions, adding that her ministry has started working on the implementation plan for this.

She says her ministry is currently working closely with PEEPA on the feasibility study for the proposed outsourcing exercise, adding that a report on the outcome of the study should be ready for approval by May, 2011 and outsourcing completed by end of this financial year.

In 2009 Mmegi quoted Ministry of Education officials saying they had failed to recover loans from students because they had not kept proper records at the time it was estimated that government was owed over P300,000,000 by graduates.

Some Ministry of Education employees have in the past also been accused of colluding with some tertiary institutions so they get a lot of money from government by sponsoring ghost students, while cases of favouritism and corruption at the Department of Student Placement and Welfare, which deals with bursaries, are rife. 

Since 2008 investigators from the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) have been camping at the Ministry Headquarters investigating cases of corruption involving department of student placement officials, leading to a good number of them being suspended.