July 12, 2021
By Dadson A. Musa
The president, Julius Maada Bio and government had the best of intentions when they decided to be paying fees for all pupils attending nursery, primary and secondary schools. The amount involved right now is so huge that government must keep an eagle eye to avoid waste of state resources. More schools have been approved and more and more children are in school now unlike before. So it’s a huge expectation and pressure on government. A government that is currently struggling to cope with keeping the new variant of the virus which is deadly is at the same time trying to keep the school fees subsidy voucher clean.
For the grand Corruption going on now there is an embarrassing delay in disbursing these monies to school.
There is a catch 22 situation here about these subsidies; ghost schools and fictitious accounts have been created to hemorrhage these funds and on the flip side those genuine schools that get it are not using it judiciously and accounting for them properly.
Maada Bio takes the blame and made the fall guy. As Sierra Leoneans we are not helping our country enough by engaging in such activities.
Officials at the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education are not helping matters either. There is a strong connivance between them and people at the finance ministry on the one hand and between them and heads of schools on the other hand. The inevitable question is, who signs documents for those schools to be forwarded to finance ministry for pay.
Most of the schools that are approved by the basic education ministry are not up to the mark but due to huge bribes given and also lack of monitoring and supervision, finance ministry is made to believe that the schools must get government funding. These very officials do not send their children to government schools but expensive private schools in and out of this country. They know how messed up things are even with the best intentions of the president. A very huge chunk of our country’s budget goes to education so letting it go down the drains will have serious consequences for our economy and the future generations of this country. Things have been made easier for school heads by getting money in bulk so why are they not playing their own part to create a safe future for our children.
Teachers who are committed but without pin codes are paid paltry stipends from the school fees subsidies so delay in getting it means taking away their commitment to the job leaving our children without effective and enough teaching time. This has also negatively impacted on performance at public exams.
Government had put a ban on lessons and pamphlets which used to earn them money to take care of themselves and their family. To solve this looming crisis in the education sector, heads must roll and some hard decisions taken otherwise president Bio will be throwing water on duck’s back with the free quality education in the country.