Council schools owed $1 million in unpaid fees

Patrick Chitumba Chronicle Reporter
BULAWAYO’s council schools are owed more than $1milllion in unpaid school fees, a development that has forced some of the schools to engage debt collectors to recover the outstanding payments.

According to the latest council minutes, the director of Housing and Community Services, Isaiah Magagula reported that the first school term saw a decline in the payment of school fees.

“1st term of 2015 has come and gone. It was characterised by declining fees payments trends,” he said.

Magagula said the total fees collected at the close of the first term was $468, 220, while residents still owed $961,717 for their children attending council schools.

He said the Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam) arrears stood at $42,761 as at the end of the first term, bringing the total amount owed to over $1million.

“No Beam payments had been made (from the government). In total Beam arrears for tuition fees totalled $42,761 and $35,724 for PTA levies,” said Magagula.

He said there were a number of schools that had engaged the services of debt collectors in an effort to get parents to pay their dues.

“Reports from these schools indicate that some parents were responding but there had not been adequate time to evaluate whether these were effective or not,” Magagula said.

He noted that there was also a significant increase in the enrolment in council schools due to the insistence by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education that all schools should enrol ECD A and ECD B classes.

Magagula said there were plans by the local authority to construct more classrooms at the schools to accommodate the surge in enrolment.

“The schools are now grappling with the challenges of accommodating these classes while they’re still coming up with plans to build appropriate permanent structures,” he said.

Magagula said council-run schools had a total enrolment of 39,132 at the close of the 1st term, an increase of 624 pupils from 3rd term 2014.

“Mahlathini Primary school had the most pupils with 2,304 pupils followed by Tategulu Primary school also in Cowdray Park with 2,264 pupils. Mkhithika Thebe Primary school had 1,892 pupils though it needed an additional block to be constructed for it to be a complete school,” he said.

Magagula said there was an urgent need for two or three more schools to be constructed in Cowdray Park to ease the high number of pupils enrolled in school in the area.