Maharey must go

The scandals over community education just do not stop, and Maharey seems unable or unwilling to stop them. We have seen not a few hundred thousand dollars, or even a few million, but tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money spent on near worthless programmes which have only one thing in common – they have been designed to juice the taxpayer for as much money as possible. And this isn’t the greedy private sector ripping off the taxpayer – it is the Government’s own institutions.

The SST reveals that the Open Polytechnic is trying to sting the taxpayer for $86 million so that it can give free cellphones away. No this is not a joke – this is happening and people are not getting sacked for it. They get $3,000 per student in exchange for “provides students with a cellphone and six resource kits so they can learn how to write a CV, be punctual and assertive, and write letters.”

There shouldn’t be a 15% growth cap on this course – it should be abolished entirely. It involvves no teaching – merely sending out some printouts that they could probably get from the Internet for $10.

This has gone on too long for Maharey to avoid responsibility. If Christine Rankin loses her job for $250,000 extravagence, Maharey should be exiled to the Chatham Islands for $250 million down the gurgler.