Parents Abusing BEAM Facility, Says Education Minister
The Government says it will weed out all undeserving beneficiaries of school fees disbursed under the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) after it emerged that some schools have all their learners receiving the grants.
BEAM was established in 2001 by the Government as part of the Enhanced Social Protection Programme (ESPP) the objective was to provide basic education to everyone in Zimbabwe including students who could not afford school fees such as Orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).
However, there has been widespread abuse of the BEAM funds as some parents and guardians who are able to pay tuition for their children are benefitting from the grant.
Speaking at the National Association of Primary Heads national conference in Mutare recently, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Torerayi Moyo said:
This thing called BEAM is a very good thing. It helps make every citizen access basic education.
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In my constituency, there is a school where all 400 learners are under BEAM.
Given the late disbursements of BEAM funds, how do we surely expect the school to operate?
Here we are saying we must not give BEAM and grant-in-aid-of-tuition facilities to every student in Zimbabwe.
Let the few deserving students be offered those facilities. The majority of learners whose parents can afford should pay. That is our declaration…
The sad thing is that we have parents and guardians who do not want to pay school fees for their children.
We really have to go out and embark on a drive to urge all parents and guardians to meet the financial demands of their dependents.
We want to come up with a declaration that we will popularise as we seek to make every parent and guardian responsible by paying for their child’s school fees.
Early this month, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo said that the Government has a staggering ZWL$278 billion outstanding bill for BEAM.
More: Pindula News
