FPE: WHO IS FOOLING WHO?

MBABANE – Who’s fooling who? While head teachers are adamant that government has not paid a dime for free primary education (FPE), the letter claims it has released the funds.

Head teachers have been complaining bitterly about the appalling conditions in schools, owing to the alleged non-release of FPE grants by government.
They claim smooth running of operations in schools has been greatly compromised to the point that lessons could not take off in some schools yesterday.
Eswatini Principals Association’s (EPA) President Welcome Mhlanga said government had committed to pay the grants this week. However, he said since Monday, no members of his association had come forward and acknowledged being recipients of the grants.

“No one has responded to the affirmative in terms of receiving the grants. What we’ve been guaranteed of, in terms of consistency are the orphaned and vulnerable children (OVCs) grants,” Mhlanga said.
He said the payment by government for the OVC grants was usually in February.

This was also shared by Siphasha Dlamini, who is the Secretary General of the Swaziland Association of School Administrators (SASA). This is an organisation with head teachers and deputy head teachers as members and is affiliated to the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT).

Screaming

She said: “Head teachers are screaming inyandzaleyo (a shout for help) due to dry coffers as government has not paid grants.”
The unionist said head teachers had prepared and submitted requests for the funding to government in anticipation of having resources to run the schools at the beginning of the academic year.

She said the request was always accompanied by a projection of the upcoming year’s intake in Grade I. Dlamini said this was an act that head teachers had executed since time immemorial but even in previous years, there were always delays.
“Government is just prolonging the payment of the grants as it should encompass the classes that were catered for by the European Union (EU),” she said.
The EU had, since inception of the FPE programme, assisted government with a sponsorship of E140 million in the past eight years. However, that sponsorship lapsed last year.

This has left government having to add about E17 million annually to its bill of FPE.
Dlamini said: “Government wants to come across as prepared with the FPE grants while it is not. If money was deposited, why are we not receiving it?”
On the other hand, government is obstinate that FPE grants have been released but only to schools which forwarded requests.
The FPE system works in such a manner that schools forward requests which have information relating to the number of pupils, among other issues, to government, for the processing of the grants.

According to Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg, those schools which forwarded their requests had part of their grants paid.
As means of ensuring efficiency, the minister explained that they planned well in advance for the opening of schools and did not want to be caught off guard. He said it was in this spirit that they made a budget provision for schools opening.

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