SENEGAL: Automatic grants payments to be introduced

From next March students in Senegal should be able to collect their grants from automatic machines, putting an end - it is hoped - to late payments that in the past have led to strikes and disruption.

Le Soleil of Dakar reported that the decision to introduce the more efficient automatic banking system was approved at a meeting of the inter-ministerial committee on banking services for grants, chaired by Prime Minister Souleymane Ndiaye.

"The payment of grants by machine will begin in March, if all goes according to plan," said Professor Amadou Tidiane Bâ, Minister of Higher Education, Regional University Centres and Scientific Research, as he left the meeting.

"We have sent the records of the first 15,000 students to the bank, which has asked for a period of about three months to set up the banking process."

Explaining the reason for delays in putting the new payment system in place, the minister said: "It had to deal with all the students' records, make bank cards for each student and install the machines."

The first batch of students whose records are being processed are those who passed the first set of examinations. Details of a second lot of 19,000 students will soon be sent to the bank, consisting of those who fulfil the grant renewal criteria, whatever their exam results, reported Le Soleil.

Afterwards there will remain 20,000 out of 54,000 students who were entitled to grants last year. Renewal of their grants will depend on results of their exams in October, which should be known on 15 December, said Bâ.

As for freshers, he said so far the records of only 8,000 students had been received, and that at least 20,000 of the total 30,000 would be entitled to grants.

* This article is drawn from local media. University World News cannot vouch for the accuracy of the original report.