YEN Namibia

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 - Web posted at 6:48:56 GMT

The Namibian: BRIGITTE WEIDLICH

The allocations to education in the 2008-09 Budget were welcome but would not solve Namibia's education crisis, a member of the opposition said yesterday.

Tsudao Gurirab of the CoD group led by Ben Ulenga, the first speaker in the Budget debate, said he supported the education reform Government had embarked on.

"Parents, children, churches - almost everybody knew that our education system did not deliver, but no, this Government needed foreign consultants (from the World Bank) to tell them," Gurirab criticised.

The CoD welcomed the latest Government announcement to allow failed Grade 10 pupils to repeat this year, which Gurirab described as "efforts being made to reverse the ludicrous Grade 10 policy which has been responsible for cutting short the opportunities of so many sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds".

"I know of no country which has acted as irresponsibly in this regard with the future of their youth," Gurirab charged.

However, young Namibians faced another scourge: increasing numbers of young children orphaned and not being able to afford school fees.

"About 12 per cent of Namibian children below 15 years have lost one or both parents.

If this trend continues, 30 per cent of our child population or 10 per cent of Namibia's total population will most likely be orphans in a few years," Gurirab added.

"The harvest of the last 18 years, over which this Government presided, increased income inequality.

[We have] a society which is marginally more sick, where more children die at birth or are malnourished with a dysfunctional education system.

So much for this Government's pro-poor policies," Gurirab stated.

With unemployment still high at 36 per cent, the CoD MP continued, it had become clear that Government policies had failed to empower its citizens.

Land reform did not bring the necessary results; neither did the agricultural Green Scheme show any success in his view.

"We must employ measures which will help Namibians to help themselves," Gurirab said in his contribution to the budget debate.