WAR veterans have complained that the delays in payment of their children’s fees, particularly at tertiary institutions, is affecting the learners, especially during the examination period.
Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (Zipra) Veterans Association spokesperson Buster Magwizi yesterday said some of the tertiary learning institutions has since barred their children due to delays in fees payments.
“The war veterans’ children are being accepted in government tertiary institutions, but privately-owned institutions like Solusi University have barred the war veterans’ children due to delays in the payment of fees by the government,” he said.
Recently, Veterans of the Liberation Struggle Affairs minister Monica Mavhunga told Parliament that the liberation board is responsible for looking into the issue of funds for war veterans and that there were companies that have been established to cater for them.
Mavhunga said the companies were already working and the board had been given performance contracts to continue working.
“The board is there and we have two companies in place, which are Power Zimbabwe and Veterans Investment Corporation. I want you to know that the companies which were set up are there and they are in place to help the war veterans,” she said.
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Magwizi acknowledged that the companies were launched in 2021 by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, but urged the government to desist from making empty promises.
“The government should desist from (making) empty promises and the issue of lip service so that the livelihoods and welfare of the war veterans are taken care of,” he said.
One of the students from National University of Science and Technology (Nust), who is a beneficiary of the war veterans’ school fees fund, but declined to be named, bemoaned the delay in their fees payment, saying it was complicating their studies.
“It is a long process as I am required to go to the ministry’s [war veterans] offices to acquire a letter which proves that the government paid my fees, yet they have not paid. I am then required to take the letter to the administration at Nust so as to register to be able to write examinations,” the student said.