E228M FOR FPE STUCK AT EDUCATION

MBABANE – The Ministry of Education and Training is short-changing school head teachers as it has not released free primary education (FPE) grants to date.

This follows that the Ministry of Finance has on record stated that it released money needed for the FPE grants to the ministry (of education).
In yesterday’s publication, it was reported that Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg said as means of ensuring efficiency, government planned in advance for the opening of schools and did not want to be caught off-guard.
In his ministry’s proactiveness, Rijkenberg said his ministry had a budget provision for schools opening.

Channelled

This, he said, was done by making sure that part of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenue for January was channelled towards schools.
He said once the SACU receipts were received, his ministry set aside a certain portion for schools as per its preparedness plan. After transferring the money to the Ministry of Education and Training, it was anticipated that the schools would be paid their grants.

In defence of her ministry’s slow pace and failure to make history, the Minister of Education and Training, Lady Mabuza, said since the inception of the FPE programme, the grants were never available to schools on the first day.

“Since FPE started, the grants have never been awarded on the first day of school; so, what is special this year?” the minister asked rhetorically.
Perpetuating the poor turn-around time, Mabuza blamed head teachers and claimed they were not cooperative in submitting the necessary documentation on time.

The minister said this was counterproductive as it stalled the processing of the requests for the FPE funding. The politician was at pains explaining that by merely submitting their requests, they would then get the grants immediately.

She admitted that no school had been paid the grants to date. The ex-head teacher of Malunge High School, claimed that some head teachers were frustrating the process of paying the FPE grants as they were not forwarding their requests.

“On Monday, when I made a follow-up on the number of schools that had filed requests with the office of the regional education officer (REO), I discovered that about 31 schools had not done that,” Mabuza said.

While these schools in Manzini had not submitted, Mabuza said it was the same case in the other regions as well. She said some schools were submitting and those that were already with the ministry were being worked on.

“Accountants and officers in the ministry are working around the clock to make sure that those who submitted the requests for the grants get the money.”
Mabuza said the money should be deposited into the account of the schools that submitted earlier by tomorrow.

She said it shall be inclusive of the funding that was paid by the European Union (EU) in the past years. The EU had, since inception of the FPE programme, assisted government with a sponsorship of E140 million in the past eight years. However, that sponsorship lapsed last year.

Bill

This has left government having to add about E17 million annually to its bill of FPE.  Yesterday, this publication reported that the Ministry of Finance’s Communications Officer, Setsabile Dlamini, confirmed that over E200 million had been dispatched to schools.
Setsabile was responding to a question on whether the national budget presented by the erstwhile Minister of Finance, Martin Dlamini, included the grants of this academic year.
She responded to the affirmative and said: “Yes, it includes the grants of this academic year. The amount was E227 923 959.”

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