More teachers to be deployed – minister

Written by on February 22, 2019

GOVERNMENT will soon deploy additional teachers to schools across the country which are grossly understaffed, says Minister of General Education, David Mabumba.

And Mr Mabumba explained that government has taken long to deploy additional teachers to understaffed schools because of unavailability of funds due to the competing needs of the State.

Mr Mabumba said this in Parliament during the questions for oral answer session.

He was responding to Chifunabuli Member of Parliament, Ponde Mecha, who asked the Minister when government will deploy additional teachers in schools in his constituency which are understaffed.

In response, Mr Mabumba said government was committed to ensuring that additional teachers are deployed in all understaffed schools.

“It is government policy to ensure that all schools including Chifunabuli Constituency have adequate staff numbers,” Mr. Mabumba said.

And contributing to the debate, Ikelengi Constituency MP, Elijah Muchima, observed that inadequate teachers is a problem experienced in most rural schools across the country.

Mr. Muchima asked the Minister if he had cared to balance the equation in rural and urban schools by distributing teachers that were in excess in urban areas.

“In urban areas, there are so many teachers and some of them teaching only one hour in a week. Have you taken the trouble to deploy some of these teachers to rural areas rather than waiting for recruitment which you are not doing soonest?” Mr. Muchima asked.

In response, Mr Mabumba said the Ministry was aware that in urban areas, for example, Lusaka and Copperbelt have what he described as ‘excess to requirement’ teachers.

He however disclosed that there was an audit current going on in all the overstaffed schools to establish the numbers adding that once that process was concluded, the Ministry will start distributing the excess teachers to understaffed schools.

He further disclosed that his Ministry had constituted a technical committee that was working with the Cabinet Office to deal with the deployment of teachers.

He explained that the technical committee was looking at various options to resolve the challenges surrounding the deployment of teachers.

“And that technical committee is looking at various options of finding  solutions including interrogating the limited  budget due to competing needs of the State,” Mr. Mabumba stated.


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