Elijah NgurareWritten by Patience Nyangove
Thursday, 22 October 2009
SWAPO Youth League (SPYL) this week said they would have expected the process of awarding Chinese scholarships to regard rural and urban poor youth.
The organisation was responding to last week’s Informanté exposé about children of high ranking Government officials including President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s daughter who received scholarships to study in China.
Speaking to Informanté this week, SPYL secretary general Elijah Ngurare also wondered whether there were strings attached to the awarding of Chinese scholarships that benefit children of the country’s top brass.
“It would be prudent that everything should be done to find modalities of enabling our young people the opportunity to obtain such scholarships/bursaries based on equitable criteria, designed and perceived to be fair for the children of our peasants and poor people in all 13 regions and 107 constituencies of our land of the brave,” he said.
Ngurare who was very diplomatic in his responses wondered whether the scholarships were given in exchange of favours from the top brass whose children left for studies in August this year.
“Are there strings attached to the awarding of these scholarships in exchange of say current or future favours by our Government to the Chinese government considering that the beneficiaries are individuals in positions that have a material bearing on decisions for tenders/contracts potentially to be awarded favourably to the Chinese companies?” Ngurare asked.
He also said such questions arise because it appears ‘high ranking Government officials had either the exclusive knowledge or access to these scholarships at the expense of the ordinary Namibian who would have desired to study in China or any other foreign country’.
The SPYL, Ngurare said, was not aware of any other individual foreign embassies directly offering scholarships like the case with the Chinese embassy without the knowledge of the Ministry of Education.
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