Friday, March 29, 2024

PF government running down country’s education system- Lungwangwa

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Communication and Transport Minister
Geoffrey Lungwangwa

Former Education Minister Professor Geoffrey Lungwangwa has charged that the PF government is running down the education system in the country.

And Professor Lungwangwa says it is unacceptable for the PF government to demand that 60 percent of the money generated by Universities and Colleges through their parallel programs be submitted to the treasury.

Professor Lungwangwa who is also Nalikwanda Member of Parliament said the PF has been running the education sector in the country without a clear policy on the sector hence lacks clear directions of what it wants to achieve.

He explained that during the MMD government, the administration had a clear policy of ensuring that education infrastructure was taken to all parts of the country and materials accessible in all schools across the country in a bid to make education easily accessible which has not been the case with PF since it took over office as there are reports of schools not having school materials.

” Since PF came into power in 2011 there has not been any profound policy statement on education from its leadership. Clearly this indicates that there is no direction for the education sector; there are no plans for the education sector. There is no policy at all and if there is no policy then there is no direction.

Under MMD we had a very clear policy on education; the profound statement on education under MMD was that education must be accessible, equitable and of the highest quality possible at all levels of education that was the direction we took.

When you talk of schools that are being constructed these are schools that MMD left at various stages of construction, there were 83 secondary schools under construction when PF took over office which they are just commissioning because even the funding was already there. We were also constructing several hundreds of basic schools across the country. We had a very clear policy on education materials, teacher training and various other programs.”

He added, “what is happening now is that there no educational materials and other challenges in the sector; these are some of the issues we are trying to take the PF to task as MPs.”

Meanwhile Professor Lungwangwa says the money which Colleges and Universities make from parallel programs is meant to motivate staff and support institutions with other needs which they can not run to the government for funding.

He noted that the funds generated by the institutions helps them to retain staff and buy materials hence it is unacceptable for government to take away their little resource.

“PF must be more honest and admit that they don’t have money to improve the education system at all levels that’s the more reason why they are even targeting resources from colleges and universities through their parallel and distance programs that those resources should go to the treasury, that 60 percent of those resources should go to the resources that is very unacceptable.

The universities and colleges of our country have been generating some little resources from their parallel programs which resources have been able to assist the institutions procure materials, retain staff, improve on the infrastructure and so on and that is now the resources the PF are now targeting to get from the universities,” Professor Lungwangwa explained.

23 COMMENTS

  1. What a shameless useless Prof. What Education policy did MMD have? MMD basically flushed education standards down the pan! This chap was deputy vice Chancellor at UNZA and look at the state of UNZA now? Let’s not cheat here that extra income is not administered properly and treated as slush funds, with no taxes paid.

    • @checkov

      What has your stupid PF done to improve the education system in almost three years they have been in power?

      PF is worse than MMD. This is a case of “bakolwe basekana ifipato”

    • Prof Lungwangwa is a let down, let others comment on this subject not him. He has the opportunity to transform Zambia’s education system than most of us. He is so thin on content and lacks direction. He was a barrier to open conversations in the sector and it is disappointing that he should be the one to point fingers at the PF. What he calls education is being a dependent on consultancy and working for GRZ till death. It is so sad that for our country – most of our politicians do not deserve to be called leaders. Ba Kabimba says he will leave politics if President Sata lost elections – he will form his church – Finance Minister says those working for NGOs are failures. Calling such people leaders is abusing important words.

    • Out of desperation, PF is going to introduce VAT on staple food to boost their coffers because they know that nearly 13000000 can not avoid buying staple food. This may come in before the end of the year. Just watch the space.

      PF may deny it now but as you all know they have no shame on swallowing their vomit.

      UPND and HH the only way forward.

    • !d10t$ like Wanzelu (aka Alibe Nzelu) are the reason Zambia will never develop! How can you defend the indefensible? How can a right thinking human being compare 20 years and 2 years of a party being in power?

      Bwana MMD are a failure and you can never change that!

  2. This is simple. The ball is in the hands of the lecturers. They can choose how they play it. A simple and quick solution is for lecturers to boycott the classes and let government find lecturers to run the lessons.

  3. STFU in 20yrs of mmd rule you only built 48 secondary schools-that is criminal and you must be locked up and the keys thrown away-during mmd we saw the dumming down of our education system-which is evidenced by the level of English on these online newspapers

    • Call a spade a spade. PF has failed in the area of education. Today we have still a big challenge to see where our children are. I can confirm that these useless PF politicians has their children outside the country and they are in English speaking and being taught in English. Why is it today that the same chaps could destroy what was left on but just to come to bring confusions of tribes the whole region. They have plan to reach to the top.

  4. Well said Prof. 60% is way too high. Where do they want to take the money when they already have a budget for education. This was not reflected in their budget. Parallel and Distance programs are an initiative of the institutions to find money for resources. Government funding is no where to be seen. If seen it comes way too late and below the required funding for an institution. It is from this money that staff are motivated as observed by the prof. PF seem to have no direction. Or is it their direction to destroy?

    • Is this the same man who was busy fathering children outside marriage? Pls, MMD had ZEFO policies. Charity begins at home. Man could not even look after his home and today he wants to pretend he has a brain? In his pants!

  5. Crazy prof. just sit back and watch iwe chi silu. what didn’t you run down imwe asuntwe?
    kupusa mambala

  6. Professor don’t listen to these dissenting voices. These are UPND vuvuzelas who have realized that The people of Zambia have a point of comparison between MMD and PF because MMD was in power just 3 years ago.

    Every Zambian is saying MMD was much better on EVERY SINGLE
    Level. Zambians are not fools, they can compare. But can they compare with UPND?? The answer is NO. UPND have never been in Government and want to use experiiments with trial and error policies and take Zambians further backwards. WE SAY NO MORE EXPERIMENTS!!! The people of Zambia made a costly mistake to experiment with PF. Don’t experiment with UPND. Suddenly HH is calling PF all sorts of names when just three years ago he was on the ground pleading to be part a non-existent pact.

    He thinks we have forgotten.

    • @Katongo Nsambe

      Putting Sata at the helm of power was the worst political experiment that Zambians embarked on. Sata has been part of every regime that failed to raise the aspiration of the people.

      He was responsible for draconian laws during UNIP and MMD. He stole money from government coffers as he can not survive without politics.

      The moment Sata was ejected from MMD, MMD performed very very well under Mwanawasa. Under Banda, MMD did better because Sata was not part of it.

      Now see how far backwards Sata has taken Zambia since he came to power. He has brought in a regime which is worse than UNIP. So your lamentations about Sata being the best are based on the fact that he has built you a castle on Sand. 2016, just know that you have no job as he has many relatives to employ.

  7. Chiluba stole but left us Mbeki road and Malls, Mwanawasa left us Mwanawasa bridge, RB left us Mobile hospitals. PF will leave us huge debt!

  8. No, the ball is in abena Charlie Mwango Katongo’s pants but all we get is a deafening silence as standards are going from bad to worse.

  9. PF government is surely broke. How are they going to manage this country, these are signs of desperation, they have no money, now they are trying to squeeze money from
    Poor institutions.

  10. yes you voted for pf.you must be happy that you are ok. pay for education you are going to recall RB.

  11. The PF Government cleared failed in area of education.The current situation as demonstrated by prof Lungwangwa is very dis heartening.There is no clear policy Governing the delivery of Educational materials.They have introduced a more practical subjects curriculum ,which is good, but expensive and yet they have no funds to run it.worse still even text books are no were to be seen.They have introduced secondary and primary schools abandoning the Basic Education system too fast without looking at out come of such a policy,currently there are few secondary schools than primary schools in Zambia,which means that the grades 8 to 9 pupils may have no access to secondary school resorting to going back to the old system silently but causing to much problems for School managers.Its proper chimbwi

  12. no plan .We all know that Mwanawasa and RB left a number of Schools under construction and were fully funded but these guys the PF without any shame they claim to be the one building them.we voted RB evening when the same schools were been shown on bill boards.They add to the number of secondary schools been built.its cleary katemba party.

  13. Revenue generated by public institutions need to be accounted for. The allocation of revenue to various sectors needs to be conducted within the framework of the National Budget. Universities are free to negotiate with government over any isues of concern. However, it is better to do that with an open mind. First of all, establish the total turn over. Secondly, devise a sharing arrangement that is mutually beneficial and acceptable in national interest. That way, it will be easy for government to consider increaments, reductions or the status quo in terms of allocation of resources.

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