08 Jul 2018

The Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Mr Ngaka Ngaka says even though the ministry has taken a decision to increase the students’ off-campus allowance, a decision on how much to increase with has not yet been reached.

Addressing kgotla meetings at Takatokwane and Maboane, Mr Ngaka said the decision on how much to increase the allowance with was still under discussion with the relevant stakeholders, but gave an assurance that the allowance would be increased before end of the month.

He said the decision was informed by the fact that it had been a while since the allowance was reduced when the country was hit hard by economic recession, and that such reduction had been negatively affecting students’ welfare.

“When the recession hit the country, government made a decision to reduce off campus allowance from P1 900 to P1 400, but ever since that, expenses such as transport fare, rent and other basics had been on the rise.

This affected students, hence I had to sit down with all the relevant stakeholders and we made a decision to increase the allowance before the end of this month looking at that the economy has been performing a bit better” he said.

On other developments, Mr Ngaka indicated that the ministry had taken a decision to place tertiary institution application forms at senior secondary school across the country.

He said Guidance and Counselling teachers in those schools were taken for training to enable them to assist applicants in filling up the forms, and drop them at the Department of Tertiary Education Financing (DTEF) on their behalf.

“It’s our hope that this will drastically increase the number of applicants for tertiary institutions admissions because some school leavers have been failing to apply due to shortage of funds to travel to these institutions,” he said.

Mr Ngaka also urged the youth who failed to accumulate enough points to attract government sponsorship after BGCSE to enroll with the Botswana Open University, formerly BOCODOL to improve their points and boost their chances of being sponsored.

He said it was a pity that such youth often gave up and lived the rest of their lives on meagre jobs than enrolling for just a year to improve and get sponsorship, hence increasing prospects for a better job. ENDS