Parents and government owe the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) over $600 000 in unpaid school fees at its 29 primary schools, it has been learnt.
In the latest council report, the local authority said it was owed $609 524 in unpaid tuition fees for the first term that ended last week.
Parents and guardians have managed to pay $371 465.
The local authority is owed $573 909 by parents and $35 615 by the government’s Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM).
According to the report, the director of Housing and Community Services, Isaiah Magagula, said schools fees payment trends at the beginning of the term had been encouraging, but the civil servants’ strike affected the trend.
“Payments by parents were encouraging, but the industrial action by civil servants, with the education sector being the most affected, put a damper on the payment trend,” the report reads.
The local authority in January resolved to increase school fees to $20 per child each term, up from $15, although the chamber was divided over the issue with some councillors arguing that increasing fees could nurture a generation of uneducated youths in the city.
At the full council meeting held before the beginning of the first term, Magwegwe councillor Benjamin Ndlovu argued: “If we press ahead with this, after 10 years our children will be backward, underdeveloped and uneducated.”
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The local authority was, as of January 2012, owed $724 374 in unpaid tuition fees for last year’s third term.
Last year in May, council threatened to take legal action to recover the school fees debt that at that time stood at $800 000.
