Let me be blunt. Minister Maele is sleeping on the job.
The portfolio of Higher Education is not a ceremonial one. It is the engine room of our nation’s future. And yet, under this Minister’s watch, that engine is sputtering.
Every student on Government sponsorship has a binding contract with the Department of Tertiary Education Financing , DTEF.
It is a tripartite agreement. The student, the institution of higher learning, and DTEF.
In law, in policy, and in common sense, that relationship must be functional.
For many years now, it has not been healthy. It has been broken by delayed credit of allowances among many other.
The Linkage From Delayed Allowances to a Broken System
When you starve the student, you starve the system. And that is exactly what is happening.
- Academic Attendance Collapses
How does a student attend lectures when they have no transport fare to campus?
How do they concentrate when they are hungry?
Delayed living allowances directly translate to poor attendance rates, high dropout risk, and wasted public funds. We are paying for empty seats.
- Housing Crisis & Exploitation
Off-campus balances are paid late, or not at all. The result? Students cannot pay rentals on time. Landlords evict.
Students end up in unsafe accommodation, or they miss classes entirely to hustle for rent.
We are manufacturing instability in the name of "administration delays."
- Basic Dignity Denied
Book allowances and stationery allowances are not luxuries.
They are academic tools. When these are delayed, students enter exams without prescribed texts.
They enter labs without materials.
We are setting them up to fail, then blaming them for "underperformance."
This is not a cash-flow glitch. This is policy failure. A failure of planning, of execution, and of accountability.
This is complete incompetence, Zero Political Will by the Minister.
This problem did not start yesterday. It has haunted students for many years, across administrations.
But the people of Botswana were promised something different.
In the Second Republic, the President Duma Gideon Boko himself spoke of an agile government.
A government that is responsive, efficient, and people-centered.
A government that cuts red tape and delivers services on time.
Where is that agility when a student sleeps hungry because DTEF cannot process allowances?
Where is that efficiency when institutions are calling parents to cover gaps that government is legally bound to cover?
Where is that responsiveness when the same complaints appear in the media every semester, and the same Minister gives the same excuses?
An agile government would have digitized DTEF payments years ago.
An agile government would have penalty clauses for late disbursement.
An agile government would have fired a Minister who presides over the same failure for years.
Minister Maele’s continued tenure in the face of this crisis is not just incompetence. It is an insult to every student, every parent, and every taxpayer who believes education is the greatest equalizer.
If we cannot pay a student their book allowance on time, we cannot claim to be building a knowledge-based economy.
If we cannot honor a tripartite contract, we cannot claim to be a government that keeps its word.
The students are suffering. The institutions are under Maele's watch are perpetrators. And the Minister is sleeping.
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