Sunday Mail
Consumer Forum
By Garikai Mazara
15 March 2009
SCHOOL fees, school fees, school fees . . .
The topic that is refusing to go away and go away it will not until some semblance of order returns to the education system. Most parents, fearing for the victimisation of their children in class and at school, are afraid to raise the concerns that they harbour albeit that the concerns will be founded and genuine.
The intention this week is to speak to the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, with a view to asking him some of the burning questions being raised by parents. But given the tragic accident the other week that killed the wife of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, it was difficult to get hold of Minister David Coltart — his phone went unanswered for long periods. It must have been hectic for everyone and he must have been held up here and there.
Anyway, we will still discuss the issues obtaining and here is to hoping that when the minister becomes available, he will be able to answer some, if not most, of the questions raised.
For starters, most parents want to know what will become of the money that they had paid to schools at the beginning of the term. For instance, some primary schools were demanding anything up to US$250 per term, some as “little” as a US$1 per day, of which some, if not most, of the money was not even receipted. Now that Government has set US$150 per term (we will come to this later on, as it is just too much), was the money paid at the beginning of the term to be part of the new fee regime?
In instances where refunds are due, will parents be credited with the next term’s fees or they should or will be given their differences in cash? Is there going to be an audit on how the money that was paid was used? Who was/is accountable for the money that was paid – the SDAs or the school heads? Or the teachers?
But the most glaring problem is that most school (and/or teachers) were not issuing receipts for the money that they received because they knew pretty well that the money was “illegal”. So recourse will be difficult, if not impossible. And asking a parent who had already paid US$150 as teachers’ incentive to pay another similar amount to the Government as fees will be asking for too much. That means if you have three pupils in primary school, you will need US$900 this term!
Against an average salary of US$100! Even though The Herald suggested in a mid-week editorial that fees can be staggered in payment, the fees regime announced by the ministry does not fit into the obtaining salary regime. As much as consideration was given to the Government’s need to raise money, to meet its obligations, the same consideration must have been given to parents’ ability to meet the fees regime.
If, for argument’s sake, US$150 is split into the three months of the term, this equals US$50 per month. From the US$100 salary voucher/coupon paid at the end of February, take away the US$50 and one would understand the parent’s plight. Though not everyone is a civil servant, we are using the US$100 base salary because most companies took a cue from Government and most salaries were pegged around US$100.
As argued in last week’s Sunday Mail editorial, it is very wrong for Government to want to fund education using fees. Instead taxes must be used for such purposes and Government must be implored to find ways of harnessing the millions of dollars that it might be losing each passing day through tax evasion.
For instance, this column once suggested that Government must force companies to pay forex salaries so that deductible taxes are also paid in forex. If companies continue paying allowances as opposed to salaries, no taxes are forwarded to Government. Or if they are, they will be in Zim dollars.
Then there is this reasoning that has since been given some legitimacy, reasoning which was first enunciated in the national budget. That high-density residents are poorer than low-density residents, or that the rural folk do not have money. Granted, the demographics of the 80s and 90s would have suggested and supported such reasoning, but the socio-political order of this decade would suggest otherwise.
Granted, the rural folk still remain worse off, in terms of development and hence accessibility to cash, but the line between the town cousins — high- and low- density residents — is very thin. For example, the furniture in Glen Norah households can be far better than that in, say, Arcadia, the cars in Mufakose far better than those in Milton Park, etc.
Given the dynamics of the last decade or so, which saw many locals leave for the Diaspora, and mostly drawn from the high-density areas, it does not readily follow that the people in these areas are worse off than their counterparts in the low-density areas.
Inversely, most of those in the low-density could just be relatives asked to look after properties by their relatives in the Diaspora, or mere tenants. The demographics of social classing of people were effective in the 80s and 90s when most of the people relied on working wages, and thus could be stratified by their earnings. But the way of dealings that had taken over life in Zimbabwe over the past five or so years have rendered the social rankings of the past irrelevant.
So it is wrong for our principals to use the demographics of the past for the present. That high-density residents do not have money or would rather have their bills paid in Zim dollars, yet the services they are getting are being for in US dollars.
As we seek the normalisation of our systems, I think it is only rational that we all adopt a Zimbabwean approach, that we are in this together, that we need to rebuild our country with concerted and equal efforts.
Shifting the cost of reconstruction of Zimbabwe is akin to shifting the blame, like the low-density residents have to pay for the high-density ones.
So it is in this light that as the responsible minister considers bringing down school fees, to match the obtaining remuneration, it is equally imperative that he aligns the same fees.