DTEF services to be outsourced

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Wednesday October 5, 2011 00:00

DTEF director Marcos Maedza said this in an interview yesterday, adding that there is an anomaly in the living allowance dispensation process, which has given the department a bad public image.

Maedza said that the public's perception is that taxpayers' money is not safe as evidenced by irregularities in the allocation of tertiary student allowances this year, which he attributed to 'lack of preparedness for reinstatement students'.

'We are outsourcing all the DTEF functions, including scholarship processing, not only the living allowance part, as people may think,' he said, adding that they have not yet identified anyone to take over the duties.  Asked why there have been discrepancies in crediting student allowances at the DTEF, Maedza said he could only answer for this academic year, as he is new in the position. He said the problem emanated from a number of factors among them a massive number of reinstating students (re-takes among others) as some of them appeared in more than two institutions and that led to the living allowance being allocated more than once.

Maedza said double registration is usually due to students changing institutions without the knowledge of the DTEF. However, all transfers should be given the red light by his department.   

'I don't have records, but we will get them next week from the banks when we do reconciliations,' he said when asked about the number of students who have received overpayments.  Another cause, he said, is that a student would be listed under a wrong bank branch and when rectifying the mistake through sending the name to the relevant one, all branches may end up crediting money to one account.  Most disturbing is the fact that there is no computerised system to disperse the payment, as the one that was in use crashed in 2010, and is being revamped now.

'We don't use a system, and this causes all these mistakes,' he admitted.  He was quick to add that there is a re-registration system that is taking place in institutions in order to double check students one by one. The move has been necessitated by the many errors they have experienced this year.

In the past students would register at the DTEF upon receipt of sponsorship and then at the institutions of study, now the third registration process by DTEF is in place to take care of instances where student would go to a different institution other than the one they are listed under by the department. 

The DTEF is in the process of recovering the money from the students concerned.