adminZimbabwe Schools Development Associations and Committees president, Mr Claudio Mutasa, yesterday said some school administrators also use fake quotations to dupe the schools.
The association monitors the operations of SDCs throughout the country to ensure accountability in the administration of public funds.
Mr Mutasa said the school administrators work in cahoots with suppliers who pay them the difference after schools make their payments.
“As a national association we have been handling a lot of cases ever since the dollarisation of the economy.
“We have parents and teachers who come to the office on a daily basis with cases of corruption being committed by school heads. From what we have gathered most of the school administrators use the same modus operandi to loot the levies. Working in connivance with those who supply goods, they inflate prices and the school authorities would go and pocket the differences after the payments.”
He said some of the school officials dealt with their relatives who run companies or have influential posts in some of the local companies.
Mr Mutasa said some of the companies that schools purported to be dealing with were briefcase firms.
“Most of the schools, if not all, use the requisition system where the school committee and headmasters should agree on what needs to be bought.
“It is those in charge who normally look for the suppliers and that is when they forge quotations or approach their relatives. What is saddening is that after investigations you would find out that some of the companies are not found on this earth,” he said.
Mr Mutasa said they had challenged the new regulations being crafted by the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture.
Sources said the new regulations by the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture will be circumvented.
Mr Brian Crozier, a lawyer, is drafting the new regulations for the Ministry, which are expected to end the embezzling of school funds.
“We have challenged Minister Coltart because we felt some of his proposals were too loose and gave too much power to school heads.
“The reason why Statutory Instrument 379/98 came into place was because many school heads were being charged for embezzling school funds and the ministry wanted to give the heads more power.
“That instrument gave parents powers to sue or to be sued and the system should still give parents some power.”
Sources said the new regulations will see each school having 14 committee members of which the treasurer and secretary would be appointed by the school head.
The school head will also be responsible for firing them.
Said a source: “The two who in most cases, together with the chairman, are signatories to the school account would stay at the pleasure of the person (headmaster)
who appointed them. This is unfair to parents who might not be happy with their performance.
“Levies had been proposed to be deposited into a Special Services Fund meaning they would be receipted in Government books leaving school bursars with no chance. This means they would also push the bursars out of employment.”
Minister Coltart recently expressed concern over the increase in the number of complaints his ministry was receiving from school officials, parents and guardians over the embezzlement of school funds.
He said his ministry had received over 30 cases of “massive corruption” in the past three months, an indication that there might be more unreported cases.
The payment of incentives to teachers by parents has also contributed to the increase in corruption at most schools.
Education officials have been deployed to work with provincial education directors to curb theft of public funds.
There have been many clashes between school heads and SDC members over the control of money and schools in general.
In some cases, teachers have gone on strike protesting against non-payment of incentives and mismanagement of school funds by headmasters.
Online Reporter