ZIMBABWE’S National Income and Prices Commission, NIPC, has deployed inspectors in schools across the country to monitor compliance to gazetted fees after reports from the country indicated that school officials were charging fees in foreign currency.
Government has recommended the arrest of those defying a fee structure it announced last week.
The Chairman of the NIPC Godwill Masimirembwa said in an interview that any school official caught breaching the law will be arrested and prosecuted.
He said the NIPC fixed third term school fees last Friday ranging from $40 000 to $200 000 with only six schools out of 83 having applied to the commission for reviews.
However the Association of Trust Schools chairman Jameson Timba said it is not illegal for parents to pay fees in foreign currency if they wanted to do so. He added that many parents were paying fees for their children from overseas in Britain and US and did not have any other means to do so as they had no access to Zimbabwean dollars. They should, however, not be forced to make payments in foreign currency, as was the case in some schools.
The move by the NIPC is in response to parents’ concerns that they are being made to pay school fees in fuel coupons as well as in grocery and foreign currency with some demanding up to US$1 000 for this term which opened yesterday.
The new school term started yesterday.
Zim Guardian/Newsnet
