CHAOS AFTER SCHOOL FEES PAYMENT HALTED

MBABANE – It’s a mess, chaos and confusion!

Some school committee members have declared that the pronouncement relating to the suspension of payment of last year’s school fees by parents has caused chaos in schools as some parents had already been engaged and agreed to pay the school fees. Not only that, but many head teachers have been inundated with calls and visits by parents, demanding the money they paid as last year’s school fees for their children. On Tuesday, Minister of Education and Training Lady Mabuza called a press conference, where she declared that school fees payment for last year was immediately suspended following Parliament’s motion of urgent importance that the ministry halts the payment of outstanding fees and issue refunds to parents who had already paid.

Confusion

According to interviewed school committee members, this had caused more confusion in schools as there were more questions than answers. The members of the committees stated that some parents who had already started making payments for the previous year’s school fees were now demanding their refunds. “We are at sixes and sevens, and do not know what to do about the commotion that has been caused between us and parents,” said one committee member from a school in the capital city. The member relayed that a majority of parents in his school had made commitments to pay school the fees. He said the ministry did not make any sense in announcing that parents should not pay yet there were some bills to be settled.

Expenses

“We are a school situated in town and there are many expenses compared to schools situated in the rural areas that do not have electricity. Now that the ministry has directed the suspension of last year’s school fees payment, we are failing to convince them (parents) that paying is crucial for the education of their children as they do not want to budge,” said the committee member. Another school committee member in the Manzini Region shared that there were no clear answers from the ministry on where the money to cover the expenses would come from. “The minister has caused chaos because we were only told to stop accepting school fees, but there is no plan whatsoever on what the way forward is,” he said.

As a result, the school committee member said their head teacher had declared that she would sit back and not work with close to no budget provided for school expenses. The school committee member stated that this would further worsen the quality of education in schools, which was already dead. “Government has only paid what it can afford, not the cost of education. If you will remember, the funds that government paid came late in the year. So now if we say school fees for last year should not be paid, we basically mean education for this year should be free,” said the committee member.

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