Textbooks donated by British aid to Zimbabwe end up in hawkers’ hands

The Telegraph

By Aislinn Laing

30 March 2012

Textbooks donated to Zimbabwe’s schools aided by British funding are being hawked on Harare’s streets, it has emerged, as Britain pledges another £23m for the country’s stricken education sector.

Some 22 million books have been distributed to more than 3,000 schools since the UN-run programme was launched in September 2010, bringing the pupil to textbook ratio from 10:1 to 1:1.

Such was their value that those delivering the books were only paid once head teachers had confirmed their arrival, and each school was given steel cabinets to guard against theft.

Nonetheless, hundreds, many still with the stamp of the schools they came from along with the Unicef logo, have turned up in the hands of street vendors who are selling them for around half their market value at £6 each.

Raymond Majongwe, Secretary General of the Progressive Teachers Union, said that education officials and teachers seeking to supplement their “meagre” incomes were most likely to blame – teachers in Zimbabwe are paid little more than £180 a month.

“We are seeking the help of law enforcement agencies to confiscate books from vendors but quite a sizeable chunk of books are still on the streets of Harare and many other towns,” he said.

Textbook hawkers interviewed by The Herald newspaper said they obtained the books from “education officials” or claimed they were salespersons for “big people”.

“This is not our problem. I buy them for $3 or $4 from my suppliers. I do not know where they get them,” said one.

Britain contributed £5.6 million towards the textbook funding. On top of that it has pledged a further £23m towards training teachers, improving water and sanitation in schools and giving children who dropped out a “second chance” to get an education.

It forms part of an annual £88 million of average funding to Zimbabwe each year. Many have questioned Britain’s commitment to its aid budget which despite other swingeing cuts will rise by more than a third to £10.6 billion in 2014/15.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a member of the Public Accounts Committee which recently raised concerns about “hit and miss” educational aid spending, said the Department for International Development needed to be more demanding about accountability from its partners.

“The issue is that contracting the distribution of aid money out to third parties also results in the contracting out of the checks and balances you would expect to have in place when using tax payers’ money,” he said.

Mr Majongwe said Britons had every right to question where their money was going but that a few “bad apples” should not be allowed to ruin a good system.

“We are coming from a war situation and dealing with people with an insatiable appetite for money but we are dealing with these blockages and correcting our weaknesses to bring Zimbabwe’s great education system off its knees,” he said. “We can’t do it without help.” David Coltart, the Education Minister from Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, in a shaky coalition with Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF, said that the numbers of stolen textbooks was a “drop in the ocean” compared to the numbers in schools.

He suggested that Zanu PF had flagged the story to undermine the gains made.

“It’s deeply embarrassing to elements in Zanu PF that the British government is helping health and education because it goes against their propaganda that British sanctions are damaging Zimbabwe and that Britain is hostile towards us,” he said.

He said that foreign aid had helped the schools system improve “dramatically”.

A spokesman for DFID said it was aware of the allegations and was awaiting for the outcome of the Unicef investigation before taking action.

“The UK has tough safeguards in place to protect its funding, making sure our education support in Zimbabwe directly helps millions of children,” he added.

 

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