The School Management Association of Fiji is concerned by accusations from the Education Ministry, that school managers are misusing government grants.

Speaking at the SMAF Annual Conference, President Govind Singh said it is a serious attack on their integrity and has called on managers to ensure their reputation is not tarnished.

“SMAF is available to assist those managers who ask for assistance, whereby you can study their operations, however managers must know that the grant given by the government under six categories is operational grant and there is no separate allocation for capital development.”

Minister, Dr. Mahendra Reddy has announced that an audit revealed that 20% of school management in the country have abused grants.

However, this apparently was an understatement.

Reddy says the true extent is that out of the 128 schools audited, 29% did not have a separate account for each school and 36.7% use money for other allocations other than what grants are issued for.

53% of the schools used money with no record.