Are we broke?

Monitor Editor | Monday November 7, 2016 12:37

This trend is not only starting to show recently, one could count back to  a period spurning  five years or more when primary school and secondary school textbooks and exercise books got a sustained knock that continues up to today. There are no text books, pupils are forced to share the books in the class nowadays, whether it is primary or secondary school level.

At higher education the problem had been precipitating  in recent years resulting in the logjam we found ourselves in today; colleges and universities are being owed tens of millions of Pula by government, some debts going back to a period of 4-5 years. 

Recently Limkokwing showed its frustrations with government’s failure to pay for its  citizens education by withholding all the certificates of the class of 2016, allegedly because they are being owed over P15 million.

In the same week the University of Botswana leaked their financial troubles to another newspaper showing that government had not paid tuition fees for students for donkey years, for decades. 

Everywhere you go, whether it is at Boitekanelo College, ABM University College, AFDA College, tertiary institutions are in dire straits, all because government is taking ages to pay them. 

In recent times students at tertiary level have also been taking to the streets complaining about unpaid allowances. 

The deep problem in government cash flow problem at the Ministry which has otherwise been hailed as the most funded, have been exhibiting themselves in the form of government trimming the number of students admitted at tertiary level in recent years, and the numbers have been dropping every year. 

Ironically all these problems would start rearing their ugly heads  right  soon after the start of  a financial year,  fresh from the usual budget speech announcement that the Ministry of education has got the lion’s share of the budget.

Then  you start to wonder, how does the Ministry of the lion’s share of the budget get broke before its financial year, is the money allocated for the Ministry, those billions of Pula really indicative of  the money available or the funds required to run the operations of the Ministry?