BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – Scholarship recovery has increased by E1 084 680.62 from E18 571 768.55 to E19 656 449.17 in a space of three months.
This is contained in the 2024/25 Second Quarter Performance Report of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. “Under the scholarship recovery, collections under the second quarter amounted to a total of E19 656 449.17, recording a slight increase in collections from the previous quarter which were E18 571 768.55,” said part of the report.
According to the report, the increase may be attributed to the reminders and outreach exercises done on beneficiary contacts, in the media and other communication platforms such as radio and social media and the participation at this year Trade Fair event. Collections were realised from three collection points, namely: the Scholarship recovery consortium, Civil Service through Treasury and the FNB Scholarship Collection account. The collections are reflected in detail in the main report.
In this period, the Scholarship unit had scheduled four major events, which also remain on-going throughout the duration of the financial year as they form the core mandate of the Scholarship unit. These include the payments of student allowances and tuitions, recovery of scholarships from beneficiaries, scholarship education outreach, and scholarship applications, interviews and awards.
For the second quarter, a total of E41 814 913.40 was utilised on scholarship grants. The unit continued to pay out student allowances in some tertiary institutions. Since the disruption of academic calendars in local tertiary institutions, owing to COVID 19 and the political unrest in the country in 2021 and subsequent other disruptions in learning, local tertiary institutions no longer follow standard academic calendars as before.
Currently, individual institutions follow academic calendars unique to each of them according to their operations and needs at the time. This has resulted in the payment of student allowances to be scheduled according to the calendars of each institution hence some students may be paid allowances while others are not paid depending on eligibility.
According to the report, student allowances are paid over a 10 month period making an academic year. It may happen that some institutions may have longer academic year months than the standard 10 months. In such instances, the Ministry will as policy requires, pay out only the 10 months student allowances and not more even where an academic year for whatever reasons, has drawn longer than 10 months.
On the expenditure, E23 127 950.00 was spent on student allowances covering meals, accommodation, personal allowance, uniform, teaching practice, project and internship allowance, books and field allowance. These allowances are paid directly into the students’ personal bank accounts according to eligibility and invoicing received from tertiary institutions. Payment of student allowances commences at the start of an academic year and as policy, paid over a 10 month period. All students at the beginning of an academic year are required to be registered and following registration are to be invoiced by their university or college for them to be eligible for receiving allowances or even payment of the tuition fees.
