Govt seek funds for stranded Mugabe scholarship students

Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa says government is looking for funds to make sure that stranded students under President Robert Mugabe's Scholarship Programme complete their studies in foreign university.

Government early in the year announced that they were stopping the Presidential Scholarship Programme due to cash constraints.

"The Presidential Scholarship has been run over all these years from well wishers and not from Government resources.

"In recent months, there have been difficulties to raise money from well wishers, a situation which has caused a lot of difficulties to students who are under this programme," Chinamasa said.

"So my Ministry is now seeking to mobilise resources to ensure that those students who are in the pipeline complete their degree programmes. We are going to put a cost on our budget for the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education Science and Technology Development."

Chinamasa said there has been an on-going rethink on the focus of the Presidential Scholarship.

"The rethink basically is that, in future, we should target the skill development of specialist skills of only those students whom we want to advance their skills in specialist areas.

"So that is going to be the future focus of the Presidential Scholarship Fund. At that time, it will be a budget under the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education," Chinamasa said.