By: Saidu Jalloh (Intern)
The Minister of Technical and Higher Education, Dr. Ramatulai Wurie, has revealed at the weekly press conference that there is no money attached to any scholarships and grant- aid application in Sierra Leone.
This clarification was done at press briefing organized by the Ministry of Information and Civic Education to notify the public about fraudulent activities perpetuated by scammers to collect money from Sierra Leoneans for scholarships or grant-aid
Dr Wurie said that her attention had been drawn to a number of fake Facebook pages created with her name to advertise scholarships and requesting people to pay money for those scholarships in which she advised the public not to be watchful.
“I have no Facebook page and the ministry is not asking anyone to pay any money for scholarships or grant-aid. As a ministry, we are trying to address those problems,” Dr Wurie explained.
Dr. Wurie said, “We have various scholarships programs and we are offering them on merit based and to groups who we think are underrepresented. We have notice over the years that women turnout are very low and they are mot thriving and we are taking that into consideration in giving out scholarships.”
She added that they have created platforms or programs for people with disability because they are Sierra Leoneans and part of the society, so what had been available to one group should be available to another group.
The Minister addressed the challenges and notifies the public on how and which platforms they had been using to advertise scholarships. She named those platforms in which they could notify the public about scholarships “we have the Ministry website (www. mthe.gov.sl), Facebook page (Ministry of Technical and Higher Education of Sierra Leone) and X which was commonly called Twitter @techhigheredu). We have also been notifying the public through our press releases post on our notice board,” she intimated.
Minister Wurie said the application for this academic year grant-aid has been in progress and it has been advertised. She said application is opened to students across the entire country, and anticipated that all region to benefit from it in accessing higher education.
She said that they had received 14,000 applicants for the grant-aid scholarship this year across the country. They had conducted interviews not just in Freetown but at national level with the aid of the Chief Technical Higher officers within the Ministry, directors, student’s secretariat, deputy directors at districts level, and registrars at the tertiary education centers and Anti-Corruption Commission to ensure the transparency of the process.
The Minister said their focus this year as a ministry is on technical and vocational training and also universities, and with the creating of sufficient manpower to support national developments through education.
“If we don’t create that manpower, it will be very difficult to drive national developments, and the government scholarships programs is a testament that shows the commitment of government interest in human capital development and also break the barrier that will create challenges to people in accessing higher education,” Dr. Wurie ended.
