Students sue NMDS for breach of contracts

MASERU – BASOTHO students studying for Master’s programmes abroad have sued the National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS) after it abruptly stopped funding them.

They are accusing the NMDS of breach of contract.

The lawsuit comes after the Sam Matekane-led government stopped their sponsorship when they were due to proceed to their second academic year.

The previous government had paid for their first year following an agreement with the NMDS.

The students have now asked the High Court to declare that the decision not to renew their bursary is unlawful and should be stayed pending a determination of the previous government’s policy on tuition sponsorship.

Through their lawyer, Advocate Kelebone Monate, the students pleaded with the court to interdict, prohibit and restrain the NMDS from proceeding with the termination of their loan bursary pending finalisation of their case.

Advocate Monate argued that the decision by his clients to go and study abroad was initiated by the former government that all Basotho students wishing to pursue Master’s degrees abroad would be fully sponsored.

“So because of this Cabinet resolution, my clients fully registered and enrolled as students at different universities in the Republic of South Africa in 2022,” Advocate Monate said.

“They have passed their first year’s academic studies and there are administrative hiccups when their loan bursary contracts are supposed to be renewed for this academic year,” he said.

He said the students were due to register for their second year in their respective institutions.

The registration process, he said, had been interfered with as a result of the decision by the NMDS not to renew their contracts “for irrational assumptions that the minimum duration for full time studies is one year”.

Advocate Monate said it is not true that Masters’ programmes ought to be completed in one academic year as alleged by the NMDS.

He argued that the Ministry of Education and Training should urgently provide a solution to this impasse because there is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between his clients and their supervisors.

“Based on this arises the need for the protection of substantive legitimate expectations of the students,” he said.

Advocate Monate said if these students are not protected, they will suffer a loss.

Advocate Monate said judicial intervention is needed to save the students.

He said the government should comply with the decision made by the previous administration to allow his clients to complete their studies.

In his founding affidavit, one of the students Lebohang Moteyesi said he went to study abroad after the previous government decided that in order to achieve inclusive growth “studying opportunities are opened to every hardworking Mosotho”.

“Basotho were made to understand this government initiative and had to comply with its policies on capacity building, climaxing by the injection of money to sponsor students to do Masters without being compelled to refund the money that sponsored their (first) degree programmes,” Moteyesi said.

“It has become the tradition that for one to qualify for sponsorship for a Master’s programme, he or she must first pay the tuition fee advanced for the undergraduate programmes,” he said.

He said the then Minister of Development Planning, Selibe Mochoboroane, had motivated them to take the opportunity to study and guided policies to be implemented throughout the process of recruiting them to study.

“That was a strong motivated political leadership, hence we enrolled in different dynamic programmes for Master’s programmes,” he said.

Moteyesi was admitted at the University of Stellenbosch to study Industrial Engineering in Data Science for a period of three years.

He said the NMDS agreed to sponsor his studies for those three full years and the agreement was communicated to the Stellenbosch University.

He said in 2020, he signed a contract with the NMDS in relation to the minimum registration for Postgraduate Programmes in Engineering.

“After we had suspected foul play about the delay in processing renewals of our contracts, we organised a meeting with the management of the NMDS on January 31, 2023,” he said.

Moteyesi said the management quoted possible situations which could reinforce their view to discontinue the sponsorship.

He said they told them that they had passed their first year and qualified for sponsorship.

He said after they reached a stalemate with the NMDS management, they approached the Principal Secretary Ministry of Development Planning who said they would organise a meeting with the Finance Minister, Dr Retšelisitsoe Matlanyane.

After considering the loan agreement, Dr Matlanyane allegedly said they ought to have pursued Master’s Degree in Economics given the trends in the markets.

’Malimpho Majoro