Yesterday we carried a disturbing story about how at least 5 000 students funded by the Higher and Tertiary Education ministry through the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) may not write their examinations following government’s failure to pay their exam fees.
Source: Deal decisively with scandal-ridden Zimdef – NewsDay Zimbabwe March 21, 2017
Comment: NewsDay Editor
Ordinarily, given the challenges that the government is facing, this would perhaps not raise a lot of questions.
But the issue has to be looked into against the backdrop of the pervasive corruption scandal that rocked the ministry recently, where the department’s principals Jonathan Moyo and his deputy Godfrey Gandawa, themselves powerful politicians, dipped their fingers into the Zimdef coffers to finance their political programmes at the expense of the education of the poor, but bright students who are meant to benefit from the fund.
Ideally, politics should have been a means to an end — where the politicians use their position and influence to improve the lot of the ordinary people.
Yet in this case, the opposite has been proven to be true. Because the Zimdef money was diverted, it is the poor students specialising in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) who will now pay the high price and suffer the consequences.
A government programme such as Stem, which is meant to inspire students to study science-related subjects, should be managed in a way that closes gaps for abuse by whomsoever including ministers and their surrogates, otherwise it fails to serve its purpose.
What is quite unfortunate is that thousands of students will be disadvantaged as a result of a few supposedly intelligent politicians’ lack of foresight, if not outright greed.
Primary and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora recently told Parliament that his ministry would not be forced to extend the deadline to cater for the students who are supposed to benefit from Stem because doing so would jeopardise an already laid-down process.
At face value this may look like being cruel, but it’s a principle that should make those in power understand that they cannot toy around with financial resources meant for a particular programme in the belief that they would be granted a grace period to clean up their mess.
We believe the fate of these thousands of students must force government to ensure that misconduct such as the one exhibited in this case will be dealt with swiftly.
Zimbabweans have every reason to push government to conclusively deal with the Zimdef issue so as not to politicise the matter.
COMMENTS