GOVERNMENT now owes $62 million in cadetship fees to all institutions of higher learning, Parliament heard last week.
BY VENERANDA LANGA
Higher Education deputy minister Godfrey Gandawa told the National Assembly during the question-and-answer session that there were challenges within the cadetship scheme due to the failure by government to get funds to support the scheme.
Gandawa was responding to a question by Bulawayo East MP Thabitha Khumalo (MDC-T), who had asked him to explain the fate of students on cadetship since the ministry had failed to pay their fees.
“I concur with Honourable Khumalo that we have challenges in the payment of the cadetship fees and to date, our institutions of higher learning are owed $62 million by government across all institutions. As government, we have engaged our counterparts in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development because it is Treasury’s duty to pay,” Gandawa said.
He told MPs that government had embarked on a payment plan to offset the debt.
“We have engaged Treasury and they are now paying $30 000 every month to the institutions, and they spread it across so that at least they cushion the institutions until the whole debt is cleared. We know the amount that is being paid per month is not as much as we would like, but as government, we appreciate the problems that we have and we assure the intervention that has been made will mitigate against the challenges that the institutions are facing,” the deputy minister said.
Gokwe MP Dorothy Mhangami (Zanu PF) then asked Gandawa to explain why the exorbitant fees paid by students ended up paying university staff salaries, to which the deputy minister retorted by claiming Zimbabwe had the lowest rates in university fees and accommodation.
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“People should appreciate that we are the lowest in terms of fees. Our fees at the university are $350 tuition fees for general programmes and $450 for the sciences excluding accommodation,” said Gandawa.
He said the Finance ministry had been failing to allocate funds to all institutions of higher learning resulting in fees being diverted to operations including salaries for lecturers.
“Everything that you see happening in our institutions of higher learning, be it polytechnics, teachers’ colleges as well as universities, is managed from the tuition fees that the students are paying to our institutions,” he said.
