‘Staff benefited from bursary fund’

PARLIAMENT yesterday rejected “baseless rumours and far-fetched fabrications” published in some Sunday newspapers on the institution’s criteria for allocation of bursaries for staff.

In 2016, Parliament invited staff members to apply for bursaries to study for this year through its allocated bursary budget of R1.5 million. This had been the case annually, Parliament said in a statement.

“Out of a total of 155 funding requests received totalling R5.6 million, which far exceeded the available R1.5 million bursary budget, only 50 applications could be approved. While Parliament would have liked to assist every applicant, the reality is that no budget is bottomless.

“To ensure fairness and equal opportunity for all staff members, preference was given to new applicants who have not previously benefited from the bursary fund and meet basic requirements. The requirements include the applicability/relevance of chosen courses to areas of responsibility and proof of admission by academic institutions,” it said.

As to the bursary granted to Secretary of Parliament Gengezi Mgidlana, Parliament said that when the institution engaged him in 2014, he was already pursuing his MBL at Unisa under his previous employer’s bursary fund.

As a staff member, the institution thus took over the funding of his studies in line with the training and development policy to ensure that his studies were not unduly compromised by his employment by Parliament.

Most of the bursary beneficiaries this year were junior managers and ordinary staff. Essentially, this meant more than 96% of the recipients of Parliament’s bursary fund were ordinary staff.

“Parliament’s training and development policy is in line with practices everywhere, be it in the private or public sector, and does not discriminate according to staff hierarchy,” Parliament said.