WINDHOEK SELMA IKELA
Education experts have rejected comments about the 'chaotic' implementation of universal primary education that the government introduced late last year. Some regional education directors Namibian Sun spoke to said all that is left do to is training in financial management and bookkeeping.
Oshikoto Region education director Lameck Kafidi told Namibian Sun that they did not experience any chaos as they knew the government had introduced free primary education and all they were waiting for was the transfer of funds to the regions. When the funds came, we transferred them to schools; before the funds were transferred we had all the processes in place. We will probably be among the first regions that have sent the money to the schools, Kafidi said.
He said the only challenge at the moment is training people to deal with such large sums of money. He said the region was planning to do to the training but now it is co-ordinated by the head office and they are doing it at their own pace. The implementation is on, schools must spend the money, someone else must run the training and they are taking forever, said Kafidi.
He explained that for 2012/2013 financial year the government gave schools N$118 per child and this year they will give N$250 per learner, and that amount is multiplied by the number of learners at schools.
When we look in the budget the amount is provided. That is a lot of money and schools don't know what to do with it and how to account for it. This is the taxpayer's money and eventually has to be accounted for.
He added that they don't have enough internal auditors to do the auditing of all 200 schools in the region. These are the challenges and we are trying to see how we will go about it, he said.
He said in terms of the actual spending of the money, some schools are very remote and when they want to buy stationery and textbooks, they end up paying more for the transport than for the books.
Ohangwena Region education director Sanet Steenkamp said 222 of the 245 schools in the region have benefited. That is absolutely amazing for a region that is second highest in the country in terms of poverty levels. The responses that we got from principals were those of appreciation, she said. She said the region received N$7 million.
She said one of the challenges was that some of the schools never had accountants. Another challenge is that the region could not do any training as yet. Some of our colleagues went to Erongo Region to learn best practices in terms on how to go about with the training. In the meantime, we are also with the head office planning to roll out the training. We will spend a considerable amount of resources on training because ... we will have to train more than 600 members, now that is going to time, she said.
Ministry of Education spokesperson Romeo Muyunda confirmed that the money was sent to the regions and it was part of the regional budget. He said the money will be used for the schools' day-to-day operations and the government will provide the textbooks and stationery. We have a guide and schools should use the money according to the guide, said Muyunda.
He said training in financial management and bookkeeping is scheduled for June. We are going to train inspectors, people dealing with finance in the region and cluster principals, he said. Muyunda said once trained, these people would train the schools.
Erongo Region education director John // Awaseb said they have started training the school boards and stakeholders in basic bookkeeping. //Awaseb said many principals are happy with the guaranteed amount of money they are getting from the government.
