Questions about poor management of bursaries refuse to go away

THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Accounts has once again taken issue with the poor control of the Government’s bursary and student loan system.

Reviewing the Auditor General’s Reports for the 2000-01 and 2001-02 financial years at a hearing in Windhoek yesterday, the committee demanded to know how the Ministry was curbing fraud given the poor accounting system it had set up to monitor the schemes. To date, bursaries granted before Independence total some N$55 million.The Ministry stopped awarding bursaries in 1996 and replaced the scheme with a loan system.Officials could not provide an exact figure for the value of loans granted to students to date.The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, Training and Employment Creation, Vitalis Ankama, said yesterday that while students were blamed for breach of contract, Government was at fault for failing to offer work to bursars when they qualified.He said there were legal hitches in making these students pay back the money instead because the original agreement entailed them paying off their grants through working for the public service.”Government is also in breach because it couldn’t provide the jobs.There’s no money lying anywhere.It’s just a figure,” said Ankama.He said it was a waste of resources to trace many of the cases, and accused the Attorney General’s office of being sluggish in taking action.”It’s just wishful thinking that we will recover [the money].Even if there are genuine cases, they are so few,” he added.The committee still felt that more needed to be done to recover the funds spent on student studies.Acting Director of Planning Patrick Simataa said that the Ministry had, however, not given up tracing those who owed Government money for study grants.He also assured the committee that the monitoring structure of the student loan scheme had improved thanks to an accounting system put in place last year.To date, bursaries granted before Independence total some N$55 million.The Ministry stopped awarding bursaries in 1996 and replaced the scheme with a loan system.Officials could not provide an exact figure for the value of loans granted to students to date.The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, Training and Employment Creation, Vitalis Ankama, said yesterday that while students were blamed for breach of contract, Government was at fault for failing to offer work to bursars when they qualified.He said there were legal hitches in making these students pay back the money instead because the original agreement entailed them paying off their grants through working for the public service.”Government is also in breach because it couldn’t provide the jobs.There’s no money lying anywhere.It’s just a figure,” said Ankama.He said it was a waste of resources to trace many of the cases, and accused the Attorney General’s office of being sluggish in taking action.”It’s just wishful thinking that we will recover [the money].Even if there are genuine cases, they are so few,” he added.The committee still felt that more needed to be done to recover the funds spent on student studies.Acting Director of Planning Patrick Simataa said that the Ministry had, however, not given up tracing those who owed Government money for study grants.He also assured the committee that the monitoring structure of the student loan scheme had improved thanks to an accounting system put in place last year.