By ANDREW MUKOMA
SPECIAL Education Teachers Union of Zambia (SPETUZ) has expressed dismay by the deliberate omission of persons with disabilities and special education teachers in this year’s net teacher recruitment.
This is despite the Union having engaged the Technical service Commission in writing seeking an audience with them, it still shunned the engagement and turned down the appointment without any valid reason.
SPETUZ president Frankso Musukwa has charged that the decentralisation of recruitment for teachers with disabilities in the history of the country has never worked but has instead created a crisis and problem hence the union’s advice to the TSC to continue with system that was used in previous recruitments with inclusion of Union and Zambia Agency for Persons with Disabilities on board to enhance transparency.
“This exclusion would have been avoided had they listened to our free advice as Union and people who championed the 10 percent policy on reservation of slots for teachers with disabilities,” he said.
Dr Musukwa said the incumbent leadership at the TSC must know that 10% reservation was born after decentralisation of recruitment failed the majority of teachers with disabilities who were excluded and led to demonstration and presidential petitions during the previous administration era.
“Since then there has never been an outcry of being left out or exclusion of teachers with disabilities in the last 10 years or so. We are appalled and discomfited as union that, out of over 267 qualified teachers with disabilities and over 600 Special Education Teachers who had applied for teaching jobs, only a small portion of less 40 teachers with disabilities and qualified special education teachers were picked, against a vacancy of the 10 percent of the 30,494 which is 3,049,” he bemoaned.
He said this is with the Service Commission Act No. 10 of 2016 as well as a total abrogation of the Persons with Disabilities Act No. 6 of 2012. Dr Musukwa added, “As a matter of fact, persons with disabilities solemnly depend on formal employment as livelihood, as they are unable to engage in any other economic activity in order to sustain their lives.”
“Worse still, guideline No. 4 on the 2022 teacher recruitment guidelines, issued on 26th April, 2022, it was clearly stated, and I quote; “In each district, up to 10% of the total number allocated shall be reserved for applicants with disabilities (with a disability card), should there be a deficit, districts with special schools may recruit teachers who have special education qualifications in this threshold”.
“When you look at the number of specialist teachers who have been hired in this year’s teacher recruitment, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the acute shortage in terms of teacher pupil ratio in special schools and units,” the SPETUZ president said.
Dr Musukwa has therefore appealed to the commission to revisit the exercise and reallocate the hundreds of specialist teachers who have been left out, as per attached list.
“We call on the Republican President as a matter of inclusion and urgent to consider appointing Persons with disabilities to part of Teaching Service Commissioners as the Commission is the largest employer of persons with disabilities in the country and as such self representation is key to realisation of the inclusion education sector without leaving behind any one,” he pleaded.
“We demand that, the Republican President, Anti-Corruption Commission take interest in the misappropriate of 10% and the Teaching Service Commission immediacy recruit all applicants with disabilities and all Special Education Teachers who applied and met the qualifications,” he said.
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