MUTARE- At least seventeen thousand trained teachers are failing to get employment chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Primary and Secondary Education Priscilla Misihairwabwi-Mushonga has revealed.
Misihairwabwi-Mushonga made these remarks in Mutare over the weekend at a press conference on the outcomes of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Primary and Secondary Education strategic planning workshop for the year 2020.
She said the 17 000 trained unemployed teachers have challenged the government to offer them employment to fish them out of the worsening poverty.
The two-day strategic planning workshop was attended by Minister of Education Cain Mayhem and his deputy Edgar Moyo, national officials and some civic society leaders to map the way forward for a sector blighted by under remuneration.
“We are hosting a strategic planning workshop for the year 2020, we invited some ministry officials and civic societies, we want to map the forward for the 2020, we want to be clear on some things.
“We invited the ministry of education because it provides some oversight role. Some of the issues we realized that we have 17 000 stranded trained teachers and there is need to bring them into the system so that they can also earn at least a living
“In the meeting, we also discussed the issue of recruitment of teachers, we need to consider the issue of language because you can’t take some from Binga and deploy him or her to Mashonaland East, these are some of the issues we discussed,” she said.
Mushonga proposed that the ministry of education should provide sanitary ware to schools and provide free education to some poor and marginalized families.
Deputy primary and secondary education minister Edgar Moyo addressing the same conference said it was illegal to hold results over non-payment of schools without authorization from the ministry.
He also blasted some schools’ teachers who were reportedly reserving their best for extra lessons.
“There are three issues we want to address, this relate to the issues of schools that continue to hold results for some school children who would have not paid school fees and this is illegal, we cannot accept that.
“The contract of paying school fees rest between the parent and the school not the children and the other is that it is illegal to charge unproved school fees, when that is done parents should demand a letter that authorize that from the ministry of education.
“There is issue of teachers conducting extra lessons, we are told teachers are not effective during normal teaching team and only reserving their best during extra lessons and this is not good at all,” he said.
