No recruitment chance for over 7,000 teachers
The Parliamentary Committee on Education, Science and Technology has described government’s decision to recruit 3,000 of over 10,000 trained primary and secondary school teachers as a recipe for corruption.
Government left out about 10,500 primary school teachers and about 500 secondary school teachers in its 2015/16 teacher recruitment drive with a promise to recruit them in the 2016/17 fiscal year.
As the 2016/17 fiscal year is ending, it is apparent that recruitment of the left-out teachers and those who have graduated in the past two years has been shifted to 2017/18 fiscal year.
But in the 2017/18 budget, which is being deliberated on, the government has allocated funds for the recruitment of about 3,000 primary school teachers.
Education Committee Chairperson Elias Chakwera has described the development as unfortunate.
Chakwera said government has created room for corruption in the recruitment exercise.
He said it is a burden on the recruitment officers as it will be difficult for them to determine who to include among the 3,000 teachers since there are 10,000 equally qualified teachers.
“This process will be marred by a lot of corruption as each of the teachers is looking for a chance to be employed. What criteria will those people who will be responsible for this task use to determine their choices,” Chakwera said.
He also said schools in the country are struggling with one of the highest teacher-pupil ratios and it is uncalled for to train teachers that government fails to absorb into the system.
There are about 63,000 teachers who are catering for over four million pupils in public primary schools in the country.
Civil Society Education Coalition already condemned the budget of the education sector, observing that it fails to address crucial areas such as teacher recruitment and promotions.
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