HARARE — The government owes schools more than US$292 million under the Basic Education Assistance Module, with unpaid fees dating back to 2023, Parliament heard Wednesday.
Deputy Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Mercy Dinha told the National Assembly that limited fiscal space had resulted in the accumulation of arrears under BEAM, a government programme that pays school fees for vulnerable children.
“Owing to the limited fiscal space, BEAM has accumulated arrears dating back to 2023,” Dinha said.
She said the programme assisted 1,856,996 beneficiaries in 2023, but payments made that year left an outstanding US$62,583,089.
“In 2024, the programme assisted 1 261 140 beneficiaries. This made the Ministry accrue an additional USD117 766 325.08 in arrears,” Dinha said.
In 2025, BEAM assisted 950,192 beneficiaries, with US$112,142,942 due in fees, levies and examination fees.
“Cumulatively, the programme has arrears amounting to USD292 492 316.46,” Dinha said.
The arrears have raised concerns that schools with large numbers of BEAM-supported pupils are being left without money needed for their operations.
Dinha said Treasury had released ZiG84,876,800 this year, which was used to partially settle arrears owed to some mainstream and special schools. Another ZiG10 million was used to clear examination fee arrears owed to the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council.
“Treasury made a commitment to clear these outstanding arrears and once cash is availed, the Ministry will promptly move to settle the amounts,” she said.
Responding to questions over why the arrears remained despite budget allocations, the government said the problem was the actual release of money by Treasury.
“If the money from the Treasury was availed, we were going to be able to pay all the arrears for BEAM but the Treasury has promised that it is going to avail some funds to us so that we clear all the arrears,” the government said.
“We are still waiting, as I mentioned that we are waiting for the funds but before the year ends, we are sure that we will have cleared all the BEAM arrears.”
BEAM is intended to prevent children from disadvantaged households from dropping out of school because their families cannot afford fees. The scale of the arrears means schools have effectively been waiting for government payments for services already provided to hundreds of thousands of pupils.
