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Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has resolved to hand over its 30 schools to parents in a bid to “cut costs”.

According to the latest council report, the local authority will hand over 29 primary and one secondary school to their respective school development committees (SDCs).

The committees will have the autonomy to collect fees and levies, make crucial decisions that include employing and paying their respective staff members.

Total enrolment at all the 30 schools stands at 39 341.  About 160 non-teaching staff work at the schools.

The move, according to the report, was necessitated by the Government’s insistence that BCC maintains a 70:30 percent service delivery to salaries ratio. With the handing over of the schools, the local authority thus gets rid of all the employees working at the respective schools including the education officer post, who monitors the schools and collects fees on behalf of council.

“When earlier this year council was instructed by the Government to attain the 70 percent service delivery to 30 percent salaries ratio in its expenditure, management sat down and tried to work to achieve this ratio by seeing where it could shed some of its activities to other entities within its body politic.

“With the situation as it is now, the management thought it would be prudent for council to form school development committees in its schools who would have some autonomy and run the schools on behalf of council. This, it is hoped, may lessen the financial burden on council.

“In effect, this means council will cede the collection of all fees to the school development committees and let the schools employ their own personnel. The current non-teaching staff at schools are as follows; bursar (responsible for three schools each), one senior clerical assistant per school, one caretaker, one messenger and two grounds staff per school,” reads part of the report.

Without highlighting the saving to be achieved through the decision, the local authority further noted that by handing over the schools to SDCs, this could ensure better collection of fees.

It noted that with the current set-up most children left their respective primary schools still owing fees.

“The advantage of such an arrangement would be the monitoring of fees payments. Under the present system, most pupils now complete their Grade Seven studies without paying anything and council has found its hands tied because of Government policies. Parents would be able to deal with each other at local levels in their respective communities.

“Council will however continue to construct schools in new and deserving residential areas as mandated by the Government and then hand them over to these committees for administration. Prior to that, council would construct and therefore hand over the schools to Government,” reads the report.

A few months ago, the local authority reported that it was owed over $2 million in unpaid school fees. It said Government had for over a year also struggled to pay fees for children under the Basic Education Assistance Module scheme.— @vusadb.