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MBABANE – The recently announced budget will meet the Ministry of Education aspirations, but is not enough.

These were assertions made by the Principal Secretary (PS) in the ministry, Bhekithemba Gama.

Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg announced what has been termed as a youth-focused budget, with the allocation for the Ministry of Education and Training increasing by E430 million.

In the current financial year ending March 31, 2023, the ministry received E3.53 billion.

Gama said the allocation received by the ministry was what they had requested under the current financial circumstances. “If it was not for the current circumstances, we would have asked for more. What we used for requesting was according to the knowledge we had as the Education Ministry on what was on the ground,” he said.

Aspirations

According to Gama, the budget indicated most of the aspirations which the ministry wanted and would help meet some of their targets.

The PS stated that under capital projects, they had requested for a bit more but after discussions with those responsible for the budget and the country’s expenditure, they reduced it for now.

He said it was a mutual understanding for the ministry to get what was allocated to it following consultations. Gama said they were complaining yet in actual fact they should not because they were consulted on same.

He said they were hoping the budget would meet the aspirations they had set for themselves and the nation.

The PS said the allocation was a capital component of their project and thanked government for apportioning the said amount although it was not what they wanted.

He stated that they had capital projects, which included the rehabilitation of schools that were destroyed by storms in the past and those affected by the recent rainfall.

“We will have to divert the budget to cover the recent destruction caused by the rains in some of the schools, which is something that was not predicted.”

He said they had already budgeted for other things. Meanwhile, he said on their recurrent component, they could not complain.

Gama said they were appreciative of the free primary education (FPE) grant as they would be able to almost cover everything centred around it. This, he said, would begin properly after the new financial year. He said going forward, they would be looking at the cost of education in schools and whether the current fees being charged were reasonable.

Such, the PS said, would assist government to come to the table. Gama said they had set the target for April 2023, to come up with a report and a proposal for secondary school fees.