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In an interview recently, Dr Msipa, a former Midlands Governor, said the challenge was now on the leadership of all the country’s 10 provinces to utilise the fund by submitting names of deserving intelligent underprivile-ged university students.
He reiterated that the trust was national and beneficiaries should thus be drawn from all corners of the country.
“This is a programme meant to benefit less privileged but intelligent students in the country. My worry is that the trust appears to be attracting only students from the Midlands. I haven’t seen a lot of applications from outside the Midlands. Other provinces don’t seem to know about the trust and I don’t want to believe that they do not have orphans or less privileged children who need help. I blame the media for that. Only Chronicle has been giving the trust prominence while other media houses, especially the privately owned, remained silent. In areas that are not covered by Chronicle, the trust is not known,” said Dr Msipa.
He said the trust targeted mainly intelligent orphans, less privileged children and those from broken-up families.
“Beneficiaries should be intelligent. For example, three of our students will be studying medicine at the University of Zimbabwe. The students first need to produce a letter of acceptance from any university in Zimbabwe before we can consider their application. From the information I have, there are lots of students who are in arrears and come examination time, they are stopped from writing until they clear the outstanding amounts. We help such students, if they avail evidence and the necessary documents that prove their case,” he said.
Dr Msipa expressed gratitude to the corporate world for the continued support it gives to the fund.
He, however, expressed concern that it was mainly companies based in the Midlands that were supporting the CG Msipa Scholarship Trust.
“I am very pleased with the support that we are receiving from the corporate world. My only concern is that most of these companies are from the Midlands yet this programme is national. It’s beginning to appear like it has become a Midlands programme yet when we set the trust up, we wanted it to be national and help build a better Zimbabwe that way,” said Dr Msipa.
He said due to poor publicity of the trust’s activities, the selecting committee is struggling to come up with deserving candidates in areas like Matabeleland North.
He said the trust management team was in the process of engaging the leadership of all the regions to help reach out to all orphaned and less privileged students in the country.
“The contributions we receive from the corporate world are two-fold.
“Firstly, there are direct cash contributions to the trust by companies. Under this arrangement, the trust selects deserving candidates and pays their fees. The second arrangement is where companies come up with an offer to sponsor directly a number of students through the trust. Steelmakers in Redcliff are already doing that. They are sponsoring three students. Hwange Colliery Company wants to sponsor two, a boy and a girl from Matabeleland region. We had only one application from that region and I have since appealed to Vice-President Landa John Nkomo to help me identify deserving students from that region,” said Dr Msipa.
The trust is, however, flexible, as it occasionally assists orphaned and less privileged high school pupils.
Dr Msipa said the trust also recently helped Nashville High School in Gweru after it lost $4 000 meant for November examinations to robbers.
“We were approached by the school headmistress and we met as a board and agreed to pay the money to Zimsec,” he said.
The CG Msipa Scholarship Trust is the brainchild of Dr Msipa. He established it in 2009 to assist underprivileged but intellectually talented students in the Midlands province but two months ago it was upgraded to a national trust.
Online Reporter