The Treasury has today released K1.284 billion of which K960 million is for outstanding payments to farmers under the 2020/2021 farming season, and K324 million is the 2022 first-quarter operational support fund for public schools aimed at facilitating the implementation of free education for all learners at early childhood, primary, and secondary education levels.
According to a statement released to the media, the Treasury, announced that they can confidently say, with the release of the latter (K324 million), concrete steps towards free education – aimed at abolishing tuition, Parent Teachers Association, and examination fees that learners used to pay in public schools, are now in motion.
“To reiterate the announcement by the Minister of Finance and National Planning during the presentation of the 2022 National Budget, the fees charged at public early childhood and secondary schools for a child to be allowed to attend class have been done away with (Free educational services are already provided for learners at primary school level).
“To this end, grants from the Government to public schools have been increased to meet the operational costs that were previously financed by the abolished fees. The funds will be paid directly to the bank account of each individual school, country-wide, to ensure that proper operational arrangements are made before the opening of schools for the first term of 2022.
“Bursaries for vulnerable leaners; to be allocated through the Constituency Development Fund, will also be released as soon as the guidelines are completed and approved by relevant authorities, ” the statement read.
“We take this opportunity to state that the Treasury has also commenced capacity building programmes on public resource management. The first target are the teaching staff, country-wide, who are being oriented on the handling of the operational support fund for public schools, to ensure that there is prudence in the management of the increased resources.
“Concerning the funds for farmers, we urge the competent authority in charge to ensure that a fair and transparent payment system is deployed so that the hardships experienced by our farmers due to delayed payments, are not prolonged. With the release of the K960 million, outstanding payments to farmers for the 2020/2021 season have now reduced by 59% from K1.63 billion to K670 million. Our target is to dismantle the whole outstanding amount as soon as possible, ” the statement concluded
This is a modern Working prudent GRZ…….
Every kwacha will be made to count…….
The difference is HEHH is a hands on leader, who knows exactly how things should work..,………….
Not those others who used to think commissioning toll gates was development……..
So far i’ll give this HH gov’t an 77 % approval out of 100 marks cuz its still too early .That might change to low 30% by the end of 5yrs dependent on how they perform overall.
At least now we have a proper govt…
This HH govt is not doing too bad so far.But we’ll need an outside firm to evaluate its performance bcuz Zambians are too politically biased to be objective.
And some village ngombe told us that they inherited empty coffers. So is the money from satanism or what?
The people praising this gorvernment of liars, have you even looked at the figure? Now that you can not afford fuel and the so called free education scam you are just praising out of shame for the IMF misery you brought to this country.
PF left empty coffers, an undisputable fact. The effective governance of rule of law, recovering stolen assets by PF, financial prudence and reduction in resource wastage has enabled pay farmers PF failed to pay in 2020/2021 budget, pay retirees and begin free education in Zambia. Others barking with bitterness on this forum should know 5 years “Patali,” more asset recovery to continue, prosecutions of thieves to keep on in order collect more money for national development.
Of course HH govt inherited empty coffers that’s why the PF defaulted on the Eurobond.Then the IMF gave a loan of $1.7b to shore up Zambia’s depleted Forex reserves.
These 2 filthy mbuzis above won’t see truths if it hits them in their empty gonads.
Muna Dekhane is 100% correct about empty coffers from the regretable PF era.
UPND is on course, obviously if you deliberately choose to wear the wrong lenses, you wont pick what is going on.
In Zambia empty coffers can produce wonders. I have heard the story of the empty coffers before. I hope the money will be managed prudently .
This is total failure GRZ, Do you even have the data about how many schools we have in this country for these amount to be shared amongst. By the way, where is this money coming from, since we have empty coffers. Please do not incur some more debts for your political reasons.
Hatred breeds hypertension, heart problems and a myriad of health issues.
UPND will succeed.As human beings there will mistakes but to the level of PF misrule and mismanagement of resources.
There’s no lying,we have choices to make, either cheap fuel cheaper than the price of all our neighbors and fail to employ our unemployed teachers and medical personnel.
We also have serious local and international debt,some local companies have not been paid for years.
The state electricity company is in serious debt
You conviniently ignore all these problems just because of cheap fuel…
Why did you increased road tax????????
How will the money be allocated to different schools?. According to The Policy Monitoring And Research Centre in 2020 Zambia had approximately 9050 primary schools with a student population of 3 339 245. Another source estimates that there are 1 009 secondary schools in Zambia. K324 000 000 divided by 10 059 schools gives roughly K 32 209 per school. Assuming the number of students in secondary schools is 1 000 000 this will translate into approximately K72 per child. Is this the amount schools were charging previously. I am aware that some of the schools are privately owned but this should be cancelled out by the 69 schools which were built 20/21.It is not enough to say we have released K 324 000 000. The minister should give a break down of the amount per school or child. Otherwise I…
There is no PR person at Ministry of Finance for Secretary to Treasury to be giving clerical statements like a cadre