By Lwazi Dlamini
The Scholarship Management and Loan Recovery has exceeded Government’s expectations and targets, recovering a staggering over E370 million since June 2017.
The exact figure collected as at June 30, 2024, is E371 741 705.
This was revealed by the Project coordinator Gugu Simelane when making a presentation to the media on Monday at Sibanesami Hotel on behalf of the consortium made up of Trans Union, SV Mdladla & Associates and DataNet.
Giving a background, Simelane said Government was struggling with recovery of the study loans awarded to emaSwati since 1977 when the scholarship initiative was launched through the King’s Order of 1977.
The government’s annual collection was within the region of E13 million per annum.
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“Government realized the need to engage the services of a consultant who would vigorously recover the study loans and the Consortium responded to a government open tender in 2012 which was to prepare a draft bill for Scholarship Administration and also design an IT Scholarship Management System.
The tender was awarded for a renewable three-year contract which resumed in February 2017 to February 2020,” Simelane said.
Simelane added: “The scope of the assignment increased in February 2017 to include debt collection and populating system with real beneficiaries’ data inception of government scholarship to date.
The three-year contract was renewed in March 2020and it elapsed in February 2023. Due to impressive delivery, it was renewed again from March 2020 to February 2023.
Again, due to exceptional deliveries the contract was renewed for another three years from March 2023 to February 2026,”
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The Consortium Chief Executive Officer Modecia Donga explained that Government, through the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, had given them a target of E26 million, but they have been able to double and at times, triple it.
“It’s a performance-based contract and it has been renewed two times.
We were able to add 14 000 new beneficiaries on top of the 52 000-government had. As our slides show,
between January and June we have been able to collect E31.13 million and our target is to triple that before the end of the year,” Donga said.
Donga revealed that currently they have a staff complement of 26 with one stationed at the Ministry of Labour and the rest are stationed at Dlanubeka Building in Mbabane.
He said the there were five operational departments, which are namely, Data Capturing, Data Analysts, Engagement, Reconciliation, IT and Intelligence.