Lobamba: The select committee that was tasked to probe allegations of maladministration and corruption at the Examination Council of Eswatini has established that Dr Edmund Mazibuko allegedly received a lump sum of E1 million handshake.
These allegations were made by Dudu Shongwe, who is Product Manager for Science Subjects at the Examinations Council. Shongwe said staff members are divided in the manner things are happening at the Examinations Council, particularly on the alleged E1 million handshake from Micro Projects, which the registrar is alleged to have received.
When making her submissions before the committee that was chaired by Khubuta Member of Parliment Musa Mabuza, Shongwe further revealed that the issue of the missing scripts from Lusoti High School, SAIM High School, Masibekela High School and Sigcaweni High School have also caused division among the institution staff.
A report compiled by the Select Committee has revealed how results for four schools in 2017 were fraudulently produced.
Making this submissions was Gugu Mtsetfwa-Gumbi, the Subject Officer at the Exams Council who said in 2017, there were scripts that went missing for Sigcaweni High School, SAIM High School, Lusoti High School and Masibekela High School.
She said while they were marking, it transpired that the Form V scripts for these schools for various subjects were missing. She added that they tried to locate the missing scripts to no avail. Mtsetfwa-Gumbi said what was unfortunate in this whole mess was the fact that the office of the registrar did not inform them in time about the missing papers.
She mentioned that she developed an interest in the matter because, seemingly all managers at the Exams Council were clueless on what might have happened to the scripts, yet they were the ones who were supposed to be kept abreast on such unfortunate developments. Mtsetfwa-Gumbi submitted it is still a mystery as to where the marks allocated to those children came from.
She went on to add that it is clear that the said results for 2017 were allegedly produced fraudulently. Mtsetfwa-Gumbi said there was a need to report the missing scripts to the police, but unfortunately until today nothing has been done. She said the Exams Council was not supposed to give pupils marks they did not deserve by just assuming or making an intelligent guess.
Mtsetfwa-Gumbi said in 2017, Lusoti High School candidates went for remarking, and to their surprise they passed with flying colours, particularly in English. The officer said the interesting part is that the difference between the main results and the remarked ones was too little. The IT director was notified of the error, but he downplayed the matter and said it was because Lusoti High School had its Paper 4 marks omitted from the system.
Mtsetfwa-Gumbi went on to explain that the registrar told them to keep quiet about the matter as he was still carrying out some internal investigations.
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