SCHOOLS MAY START PAYING INSURANCE

LOBAMBA – The almost 900 public schools countrywide might pay up to E3 000 each per annum for insurance.

This is because government, through the Ministry of Education and Training, now wants all schools insured, more especially against structural damages due to natural disasters.

Phineas Magagula, Minister of Education and Training, revealed this during a debate of the ministry’s second quarter performance report by the Senate Portfolio Committee in Parliament yesterday. He said every year, there were many schools that suffered damages caused by storms and it cost the ministry millions of Emalangeni to get them repaired.  He said the rate of repairing the damages has often been very slow because of the insufficiency of funds in government coffers. Furthermore, he said it was not easy to budget for the length and breadth of the damages since natural disasters were an unpredictable phenomenon.

The minister stated that those who were most affected when schools got destroyed during bad weather conditions, were pupils. They either have to stop lessons while attempts were made to quickly repair damages or have to put up with learning in a less conducive environment.

Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Training Pat Muir, in an interview, said two local insurance companies had already been approached for consideration of this matter. “They brought some options before the ministry to consider but one that so far appears to be reasonable is the payment of E3 000 per year per school. But no concrete decision has been arrived at. Insuring schools will unburden the ministry from the heavy task of raising enough funds to repair damages,” explained Muir.

On another note, the minister, in his preamble, mentioned to the portfolio committee that a report on the payment of top-up fees in schools would be ready in 28 working days.
He said a task team was appointed to conduct consultations with the public and it is their report that will shed some light on what route to take on this matter. Top-up fees were effectively cancelled in February this year after a Speech from the Throne during the opening of Parliament. No school was permitted to charge these fees, which basically was additional money charged per pupil to facilitate the running of the school, among other things.

His Majesty King Mswati III urged government and all other relevant stakeholders to meet and find ways of making the running of schools possible, even in the absence of top-up fees. However, this task did not happen expediently as school head teachers would have wanted. Many of them, as the Swaziland Principals Association (SWAPA) attested to before, struggled to keep their schools running. Support staff such as secretaries, security guards and many others went on for months without being paid.

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