Teachers’ college battles M96m tax bill

“The principal debt is M25 million and the RSL included charges, ballooning the debt to M96 million,” Tšitso Cheba, a member of the parliamentary social cluster committee, said.

The college wrote to the social cluster committee seeking its intervention.

“We acted swiftly to save the college from closure,” Cheba said.

He said they visited the college on July 26 to establish what was going on and they discovered that it was poorly administered.

“The audit reports were not done for five years,” Cheba said.

He said they found that while the college was deducting the PAYE from employees, it was not remitting the funds to the tax authority.

He said the college said it had approached the RSL to indicate how it would settle its debt.

From the negotiations, it appeared that the RSL agreed to the settlement plan but the college was shocked to see the RSL not walking the talk, according to Cheba.

He said the college authorities found out that the RSL had told the Ministry of Education and Training not to submit a subvention fund to the college as it owed them.

The RSL had also written to one local bank instructing them to freeze the college’s bank accounts because of the debt.

“The college was on the brink of collapse,” Cheba said, adding that it was now hamstrung by the financial difficulties.

Another problem that they discovered was that the College Council had increased fees without consulting the National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS) under the Ministry of Finance.

The NMDS sponsors many students at the college.

Cheba said the fees review had seen some students dragging the college to court to block the increase.

“The court ruled in favour of the students,” he said.

What baffled Cheba is that the College Council is made up of the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Education, the Chief Executive Officer from the Council of Higher Education, and a representative from the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.

So he wondered how the fees were reviewed without consulting the NMDS yet it is under the Ministry of Finance which is represented at the College Council.

Cheba said he filed an urgent motion in parliament, which was discussed last Wednesday, asking the House to consider the crisis at the LCE.

He said the Minister of Education and Training, Professor Ntoi Rapapa, told parliament that they would do all they can to save the college.

The public relations officer at the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), Mary Mokemane, said the matter should be directed to the LCE for a response.

“The school is autonomous. We are just overseers,” she said.

The acting rector of the LCE, Dr Moeketsi Letele, said he was not in a position to comment on the matter at the moment.

Majara Molupe