The National Action for Quality Education in Zambia (NAQUEZ) has challenged the Examinations Council of Zambia (ECZ) and the Ministry of Education to explain why the country still cannot print examination papers locally after being independent for 58 years.
NAQUEZ Executive Director Aaron Chansa said ECZ should make known to the public how much they are spending on printing and importing of examination papers and should disclose why they are still importing exam papers when they have the capacity to print papers on their own.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Chansa said it is disturbing and worrying that the Examinations Council of Zambia has continued to expensively print examination papers abroad because the practice is not only wasteful but also embarrassing.
Chansa added that the continued printing of examination papers abroad has potential to fuel corruption, one vice the country is making efforts to wrestle down.
“At a time when Zambia is reconstructing its economy, when the country needs to put to good use every Kwacha and Ngwee it has in hand, we cannot afford the luxury of wasteful expenditure, which we can avoid by localising prudent expenditure in line with the principles of right price, right quality and timely delivery of goods and services within the country”, he said.
He mentioned that in February 2020, the Ministry of Education called for an Indaba to discuss issues that affected the education sector at the time and one of the resolutions of the meeting was for ECZ to build its own printing facility like many countries’ examination bodies in the region had done and the Council agreed with the stakeholders to satisfy the resolution in three years.
Chansa said it is regrettable that three months before the end of the three years, the Examinations Council of Zambia has done nothing to actualise the desire of all stakeholders by constructing a modern printing plant adding that Zambia and Zimbabwe are the only countries in the SADC region which are still printing their examination papers abroad, a situation he stressed is embarrassing.
He said the country should not continue empowering other nations when the same can easily be done locally as a home-grown solution to the challenge of printing is more economical and sustainable than otherwise noting that if examination papers were to be printed locally, the ECZ would be in a position to save millions of Kwacha to motivate invigilators, examiners and markers, who labour so much to make the assessment of Grades 9 and 12 examination candidates a successful national practice.
