SHOULD NECTA REFUND THE AFFECTED STUDENTS OR NOT?

Good, now that the National Examination Council (of Tanzania) has conceded that some of the examinees of last year’s national ordinary level examinations who were declared failures were after all not, something is supposed to happen. In the interim period between the original exam results come out and terrorized every one of us and a few days ago when the new reformed results came out so much took place. An invisible hot potato of shame was being tossed about from house of parliament to ministry of education to the national examination council, a commission was set up to investigate the mess, files were pulled off shelves and dusted to provide a fresh look in opinions presented earlier about the lack of professionalism in curriculum preparations (and other matters) in which case Mbatia (nominated MP) became an  unexpecting star for presentations he had made earlier concerning the matter.

Inside the national examinations council the director and the board chair threatened to resign (I never heard they did though) fuming over being made to dance to tunes not of their design or desire, the legislative is one of the trio that determines where we go as a state though, and to its tunes we dance not as per our individual wills but per a collective decision of theirs, meanwhile  its assumed you are represented.

The National Examination Council of Tanzania continued operating as usual during the extended dilly-dallying apportioning more efforts into collecting cash from appealing examinees as the number of appellants was much more significant than in the past years. This time round all the appeals fell through lending more tint to an already dark situation yet!.(this blog wrote of the appeals).

The most interesting consequence of this trend of events was the registering for re-sitting of the exams during this academic year in which process the examination council collected 56,000/- Tshs per each applicant. The postal corporation was the agent for this lucrative activity and receipts were issued. Now that the paid for re-sitting is naturally revoked will the council refund these amounts?, It’s not like  they lack accounting mechanisms inside there, just pay back via the same channels the amounts received for which services paid for are not to be rendered any more reasons being mistakes done by the payee. Is this too much to ask?

There are so many hidden costs, some requiring psychological professionals to translate into monetary values, some just expenses incurred in due course, bus fares, communication expenses etc. The problem with our system is we do not have lawyers pushy enough  to capitalize on such situations, but this does not prevent some of the affected from recovering their money. May be the parliament may again pull some of those golden strings, we assume we are represented don’t we?,hahahaaaa!