Govt fails to hire 428 teachers

...More vacancies exist in Education--Chide
BY WATIPASO MZUNGU JNR


Over 428 teachers have claimed that government “government shows no interest in hiring them” six months after they graduated from Domasi College of Education.

This is despite the fact that our education system suffers a serious shortage of teachers in almost all the public schools and that trained were meant to fill the vacancies.

Our sources told Maranatha Mzungu on condition of anonymity that since they graduated from the college last year, government does not seem ready to employ them and that they are now tired of waiting.

“We're tired of waiting; government should tell us the truth. If they're not interested in us, they should come out in the open so that we can find other means of survival instead of keeping us jobless all this time,” said the disappointed teachers in telephone interviews.

“What's more interesting is that it is the same government that complains that teachers are not enough in its public schools. Are they really serious?” they wondered.

The disgruntled teachers further alleged that the Ministry of Education in inviting applications from suitably qualified teachers to fill the vacancies that exist in the ministry “when they are failing to release the results of the interviews they conducted last year”.

“Some of us did interviews for PT2 last year, but nobody has heard the results. So where is the essence of advertising for PT3 vacancies when they can't release PT2 results?” they asked.

Ministry of Education publicist Lindiwe Chide confirmed having trained the 428 teachers for deployment in national secondary schools, but dismissed teachers' claims that the ministry has dumped them.

Chide stated that her ministry had already issued posting instructions, but that she was not aware of the actual date when the postings will be effected.

“It is wrong to say we're not giving them jobs. Actually, posting instructions are already out and have already been posted to the divisions. They've to check there for posting instructions,” she said.

But the teachers countered Chide's explanations saying what she was saying was not what was on the ground.

“Which division is she talking about. She is a liar. Please sir, voice this out for us. Tatopa ndikukhomereredwa (We're tired of being downtrodden!),” they complained.

Chide explained on Friday that the ministry's desire to train and recruit more teachers to counter the teacher-deficit currently being experienced in the public schools.

She could, however, not say the number of teachers the ministry was in need of to meet the demand.

“Obviously, we need more teachers since our target is that by 2013 the ratio should decrease from 90:1 to 60:1 in primary schools and 55:1 to 40:1 in secondary schools,”Chide explained.

Currently, the Ministry of Education has 40,034 teachers for primary schools and 4,259 qualified teachers for secondary schools.

This is by far too little if Malawi is really serious to reach the 2013 goals on pupil-teacher ratios.

END