BY MOREBLESSING NCUBE
One of the top schools in Matabeleland North is in the eye of a storm after withholding O’ Level and A’ Level examination results for two former students from as far back as 2015 following a dispute over outstanding fees.
Lawyer Prisca Dube from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has since written to Fatima High School in Lupane demanding that the institution must release Wellington Nyoni and Sithembinkosi Ndlovu’s results.
ZLHR said the results of the two former students, who are children of war veterans, were being withheld even though their outstanding fees had been settled by the government.
“In Lupane, we have asked authorities at Fatima High School to release O and A’Level examination results for Wellington Nyoni and O’Level examination results for Sithembinkosi Ndlovu, which they are withholding as a way to induce payment of outstanding school fees,” ZLHR said.
” School authorities have been withholding results for Nyoni, who wrote his examinations in 2015 and 2017 respectively and for Ndlovu, who sat for her examination in 2016 claiming that the students’ parent Fransisca Ncube and guardian Lochi Stephen Ndlovu, who are liberation war veterans had not paid-up school fees and yet all along the children’s school fees was being paid by the governments.
ZLHR said following discussions between Dube and the school’s headmaster, it was resolved that the two former pupils should engage the head as he was not aware of the two cases.
“The Fatima High School head only identified as B Moyo advised the human rights lawyer that he was not aware of the matter and requested that both Nyoni and Ndlovu should report at the school and see him personally to have the issues resolved,” the lawyers said.
Local schools’ resort to withholding examination results for former students in a bid to force them to pay outstanding school fees.
The government pays school fees for children of former fighters in Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war.