The Ministry of Education is coordinating with Public Health Ministry to find out the disbursement of scholarships to nursing students from Sema Pattana Cheewit Fund after it was disclosed that 198 out of a total of 254 scholarship recipients were partially paid with about 11 million baht still left unpaid for the past six years.
Nursing students of the Boromarajonani College of Nursing is one of the three groups of educational institutes eligible to receive scholarships from the fund.
Each nursing student will receive 40,000 baht per scholarship annually for four-year period of study under an agreement between the two ministries to produce nurses to work in rural areas.
A recent check of information about the fund disbursement with the Public Health Ministry for the years 2012-2017 shows that only 56 nursing students have received the full amounts of scholarships while the rest have received only partial sums.
Of the students who were partially paid, several of them have already graduated while the rest are still studying.
Public health deputy permanent-secretary Dr Panpimol Wipulakorn
Public health deputy permanent-secretary Dr Panpimol Wipulakorn said to solve the problem regarding the students who were partially paid, the Public Health Ministry had to set aside a special fund to support these students until their graduation.
She said that the Public Health Ministry began to become suspicious after the partial disbursement of scholarships to nursing students was repeated for a couple of years.
She noted that transfer of fund to the nursing college or directly to the scholarship recipients was often delayed, resulting in many recipients receiving only partial sum of the amount they were supposed to receive.
This problem has been raised several times with the Fund management by the college, but the problem remains unresolved, said Dr Panpimol.
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