Dear Editor,
THE government through the Ministry of General Education recently recruited more than 1, 000 teachers across the country. This follows the job advertisement for teachers which was done some time back.
The recruitment is welcome. This is because the recruitment exercise will ultimately put more money in the pockets of the recruited teachers and at least reduce the number of unemployed teachers.
Colleges and universities have been churning out graduate teachers year in year out without being employed by the Ministry of General Education. It is true that the number of recruited teachers is not quite big but, it has somehow mitigated the unemployment levels of teachers.
The good part is that some differently-abled teachers have been employed by the Ministry of General Education. My fervent wish is that more teachers should be recruited.
Moving forward, I implore the government through the Ministry of Finance to allocate more money to the education sector as the Minister of Finance presents the national budget in October. More funding to the Ministry of General Education is the way to go in a bid to recruit more teachers.
The trained teachers resort to seek employment from the private schools just to enable these teachers put food on the table. The unfortunate part is that these are exploited by being poorly remunerated.
It is clear that schools in rural areas do not have adequate teachers to meet the educational needs of the pupils. On this score, it is appropriate for the United Party for National Development government to deploy a good number of the recruited teachers to the remote areas.
All said and done, I wish to extol the government for recruiting more teachers which is a welcome move.
ELEMIYA PHIRI,
Lusaka.
