BY PHUMELELE MKHONTA
MBABANE– Lenient!
Most principals from the different primary schools in Eswatini have shown their merciful side by allowing parents to pay top-up fees at their own pace.
Worth noting is that schools under the Free Primary Education system normally request parents to pay top-up fees, which are usually utilized to support school running expenses.
These support funds are agreed to by the parents and they vary from school to school.
Principals in the different primary schools have given parents the liberty to pay the above-mentioned fees at their own pace. This activity was done differently, in an agreed manner, in different schools.
In many schools, like Mater Dolorosa Primary School (MDS), the parents were made to sign the date they would be able to pay the fees against their children’s names while signing off taking stationary.
Under normal circumstances, parents were expected to pay the fees before schools commenced for the year.
When contacted for comment, Eswatini Principals Association President Welcome Mhlanga acknowledged the information, however, stated that he could not comment by the time this article was compiled as he was in a pressing meeting.
In the meantime, in an interview last week, the Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Themba Nhlanganiso Masuku said they were fast tracking the process of paying FPE funds to school.
Worth noting, last year, due to escalating food prices as a result of the global crisis that has been fueled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the government struggled to keep schools feeding schemes afloat.
For that reason, some schools and parents were urged to support the schools feeding schemes (top-up fees). Some schools that had enough land and water were urged to start using that land to cultivate crops to supplement the feeding scheme while the surplus could be sold to buy other food item.
