DTEF launches audit to chase �fugitive� billions

Baboki Kayawe | Thursday September 14, 2017 16:36

The audit represents the Department’s last hopes, as its other attempts have been foiled by the absence of information on beneficiaries and the institution’s lack of legal grounds to pursue payment or prosecution of culprits.

DTEF director, Josephina Ntshinogang said as government coffers shrink, the Department was in a race to recover outstanding student loans. However, the process is complicated by numerous challenges.

“Repayments are ongoing, but very slow,” she said.

“Some people are simply unwilling to pay, while others cannot be traced. The difficult part is that although the agreement entered into when students took up government sponsorship is supposed to be legally binding, our legal advisors have told us that we do not have powers of prosecution or any legal means to obtain payment.”

At present, the DTEF can only refer debtors to the Attorney General’s (AG) Chambers. However, the referral process is also problematic because the AG demands the addresses of defaulters to be provided. “Many of the people sponsored were using different addresses then and have since changed. It is a mammoth task to locate them now,” she said.

Those beneficiaries who are tracked down and commit to pay, often begin defaulting after a while, Ntshinogang said.

The director said the ongoing audit was aimed at tracking all beneficiaries. The exercise will be completed in a year’s time.

Previously, the DTEF had mounted campaign after campaign to recover student loans, without much success. In 2015, the Department finalised talks with the Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) to identify former government-sponsored students who had defaulted in paying back their loans.

According to the then DTEF director, Eugene Moyo, the exercise included beneficiaries employed in the private sector and earning taxable salaries. Former students identified would be sent alerts by BURS, followed by defaulters’ notices from DTEF, he said at the time. However, Ntshinogang said the deal had not materialised as the BURS wanted to implement the partnership once the student financing function was moved to the Human Resource Development Council.

“The transition is still ongoing and we are awaiting its completion,” she said.

The DTEF also attempted a similar arrangement with BotswanaPost in an effort to boost collections.

“I don’t know how far that one ended. I only hear there was an agreement with BotswanaPost to accelerate loan collections,” she said.

 Meanwhile the DTEF has sponsored 9,000 new learners for the 2017/2018 academic period, with about 2,000 students having been reinstated. The Department is currently dealing with sponsorship appeals.