Needy students who applied for Prophet Shepherd Bushiri Bursary Scheme have started benefiting from the scheme.

Bushiri’s Public Relations Officer Ephraim Nyondo has confirmed of the development in a statement made available to faceofmalawi.

According to Nyondo, over 200 students have so far received the bursary.

“Preliminary scrutiny of the applications showed that 2892 applications were from students outside Malawi while 425 were from those in postgraduate studies and 120 were from those applying for international scholarship.

“To mean, 3 437 applications were out rightly disqualified in the first phase of the applications. For international students, there is scheme targeting them and it will be announced eventually,” he said.

Added Nyondo: “The Foundation, then, processed 4 123 applications of which 489 were from secondary schools and 3 634 were from tertiary institutions.

“Out of 489 secondary school applications, 240 applications were approved and verified with the applicants, their parents/guardian and their head teachers. The banks have, so far, disbursed about 98 percent of the fees and the beneficiaries have already been communicated on the same.

“On the remaining 249 applications, 163 have been disqualified as they failed to meet the criteria. The Foundation, however, is still in the process of verifying the remaining 86 applications because most of these provided details that are proving hard for the team to easily verify.”

Over 7,000 students applied for Bushiri’s bursary in the country.