No students’ grants: Minister

Source: No students’ grants: Minister – DailyNews Live

Blessings Mashaya      20 May 2017

HARARE – Government is unable to reintroduce student grants due to
financial constraints, Higher Education deputy minister Godfrey Gandawa
said.

This comes as student representative committees (SRCs) have been demanding
the grants on the back of economic hardships that have hit most students
in colleges and varsities.

Speaking in the House of Assembly this week, he said: “At the moment
government has fiscal constraints and we can, therefore, not reinstate the
grants to the education sector.”

“…we are looking at ways to come up with loans but we cannot disburse
grants at the moment,” Gandawa said.

“The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has already advertised for financiers
that can give such loans at low premiums so that students can be able to
pay for their tuition and accommodation fees,” he said.

Gandawa said students may start getting the loans in September this year.

“The RBZ and Finance ministry are working on the modalities so that we can
have discussions with financiers so that the students can be assisted in
that regard at tertiary institutions and colleges.  This is still under
consideration.

“Government and financiers are going to come up with an agreement that
will be user friendly to the students upon their attaining their degrees
and once they attain employment,” he said, adding that “the modalities are
going to be worked out and it is work in progress”.

“Under our plans with the Finance ministry and RBZ, we hope that when the
September semester starts, we would be in a position to be disbursing
these funds.”

Early this year, tertiary students requested a meeting with Higher
Education minister Jonathan Moyo and a parliamentary panel to discuss
re-introduction of the students’ grants.

“It would be folly of the highest kind and unparalleled naivety for us to
just accept Moyo’s promise as it is and not make any follow up. The
government has promised to bring back loans before without actually doing
so,” University of Zimbabwe SRC spokesperson Tafadzwa Chabata said then.

SRCs have reported massive dropout rates at universities because of
tuition fees challenges, with the  Zimbabwe National Students’ Union
(Zinasu) claiming that at least 12 000 threw in the towel in the first
quarter of 2016 alone.

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