Cash crunch paralyses education offices

ZIMBABWE’S public education system is facing mounting financial pressure, with district offices struggling to perform basic administrative duties amid shortages of stationery, printing supplies, and other essentials, exposing widening funding gaps in the sector.

The crisis highlights a deeper structural problem: district education offices, which are expected to operate through allocations from the national budget, have increasingly relied on the now-suspended Better Schools Programme of Zimbabwe (BSPZ) to meet routine operational costs. With BSPZ funds frozen amid corruption investigations, officials say basic services — from printing official correspondence to auditing schools — are being disrupted, raising questions over the sustainability of the sector’s current funding model.

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