By Faith Kamtambe:
Teachers Union of Malawi (Tum) has told the government to promote more teachers before the end of March 2019.
Early this year, the government decided to promote 14,000 teachers out of 80,000 teachers in the country, but Tum argues that the number is not enough and wrote Education, Science and Technology Ministry to consider promoting more teachers.
In a response letter dated February 1 2019 from the ministry, the government promised to increase the number of promoted teachers.
But Tum Secretary General, Charles Kumchenga, said the government is silent on the matter and is not conducting interviews for teachers that should be promoted.
“Deciding to promote only 14,000 teachers against 80,000 teachers is a mockery. We wrote [the] government on the same and, in response, [the] government assured us that it is going to promote more than 14,000 teachers. But the surprising thing is that, up to now, there is no development in regards to the promotion,” he said.
“Our request was that teachers to be promoted in primary schools should not be less than 25,000 and, for secondary schools, promoted teachers should not be less than 15,000. If the government will not meet our March-end demands, then that will be a dispute. If the government is not going to promote teachers before May 21 this year, definitely it will attract an industrial action.”
But the ministry’s principal secretary, Justin Saidi, said the government is following right procedures to promote additional teachers as demanded by the teachers’ organisation.
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