Schools miss out on getting funds due to cash-flow problems

MANY schools have not received their Tuition Fee Free (TFF) funding due to the government’s cash-flow problems, Education Minister Nick Kuman says.
Kuman told Parliament that those problems were taking their toll on the TFF policy.
Wosera MP Gawi Joseph Yopyyopy asked him to explain why many schools had closed due to funding issues and questioned where the TFF funding had gone to.
Kuman said the Education Department did not control finance and funding for TFF, which was processed by the Treasury Department to go into  school accounts.
“K620m is allocated to TFF annually, 40 per cent is paid in cash to schools for operational costs, while 30 per cent is given through infrastructures and 30 per cent as commodities,” he said.
“But due to the cash-flow situation the country is facing, we were not able to give the full 40 per cent cash component to schools.”
Kuman also said that only some schools had received their infrastructure components.
“Starting next year, we will park the infrastructure component in trust accounts at district administrations so that infrastructures can be managed and delivered by the district administration.”
Kuman said for the commodity component, they had trialled the process of delivering them to schools for the last two years and found that delivery took longer than planned.