Radio VOP
23 June 2012
Education, Sports, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart has attacked Zimbabwe’s ruling elite for squandering on foreign travels what he says was three times more than his ministry’s 2012 budgetary allocation.
Coltart told guests at a United States Achievers Programme (USAP) graduation ceremony in Harare on Friday, he was frustrated with the continued lack of commitment by the country’s government to prioritise education.
“Our priorities are wrong. We are not valuing education sufficiently,†Coltart said, “I have complained about this last year in the context of the disproportionate amounts being spent on foreign travel in relation to education and tragically it continues this year. We have spent three times more on foreign travels than we have spent this year on non salary education matters.â€
Coltart did not reveal how much this was.
The MDC-N senator for Bulawayo South lamented what he said was even the international community’s propensity to spend more on defence as opposed to education.
Meanwhile, 22 Zimbabwean high school graduates have been awarded scholarships to go and study in 10 top universities in the USA, courtesy of the United States government.
The students were drawn from all over the country.
Speaking during the same ceremony, US ambassador to Zimbabwe Charles Ray told the US bound Zimbabwean students to return home and develop their areas with the education they would have acquired abroad.