Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) in North-western province has called for a transparent teacher’s recruitment exercise that is free of corruption.
ZNUT Organizing Secretary for North-western region, Setty Maseka said the union will be closely monitoring the recruitment processes to ensure that the right thing is done.
Mr. Maseka said he is expecting that the Provincial Education Officer and all the District Education Board Secretaries will also monitor the process with keen interest so that issues of corruption are avoided.
“Our implore is to the Provincial Education Officer and the whole group of the District Education Board Secretaries because these are the eyes of government and would expect that they also monitor this process with a lot of interest so that we avoid these issues of corruption,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Maseka said the teaching fraternity in the province is greatly humbled by government’s move to employ 30,000 teachers, adding that it is long overdue.
He said looking at statistics most of the schools around the country are in dire need of teachers, adding that the pronouncements on recruitment of teachers is something that everyone should embrace.
Mr Maseka however, called on government to consider recruiting more science, mathematics, design and technology teachers as these are the areas with serious challenges of teachers.
“You may be aware that as a province we have actually a challenge in most of the subjects areas, to mentions a few we have a critical shortage of teachers in the sciences department if you go round the whole province…not only the sciences we also have a seriously challenge in subject such as mathematics, design and technology, computer studies,” he said.
Mr. Maseka lamented that most of the teaching staff with reasons best known to themselves shun to study these subject at higher level such as universities.
“And so you will find they are very few in most of these schools and if indeed the new dawn government would be able to look towards this biasness, I think that will go a long way in meeting the needs of our schools in the province”, he said.
Last year during the presentation of National Budget by the Minister of Finance, government said it would recruit 30,000 teachers in 2022 a process which has already started being implemented.
The Ministry of education should come up with an initiative to improve the number of teachers for Mathes and Sciences by ensuring that they are given priority in terms of employment once they complete their studies and if well managed the shortage can be a thing of the past in five to ten years. As long as no initiative is taken this shortage will keep on increasing every year. Children should be taught arithmatics and encouraged to develop interest an early age. In fact this subject is the easiest to learn. On corruption in the Teacher recruitment process it can be zero completely because people are so desperate for employment the chances of people involved being corrupted is very high Zambians have gotten used to pay something for something to be done for them. These corrupt acts are a…
As an outside observer, it seems corruption is endemic in Zambia. It affects all parts of life. Everyone is suspicious of it.
That is such a shame.
Corruption in the recruitment of teachers is so deep rooted such that you can’t rule it out especially in this mammoth recruitment. The problem is that applicants are so desperate that they themselves sometimes make overtures for bribery. Politicians have also made promises to the youth and their extended families, that include concubines, that they’ll deliver. The process and request certain names to be included has already started. If I’m in Kabwe and I’d like to apply for a place in Chama why should I be made to travel to Chama just to deposit my documents Chama Post Office? Or if I’m Kabwe and wants a position in Kabwe why should I be made to submit through ZAMPOST? This is an admission of the failure of systems. We’ve failed