Telling the sad tale of one teacher’s trials
By Fred Buwuule
Sep 3, 2004
|
Uganda’s public service makes a teacher poorer and more miserable! When you qualify as a teacher you may have many expectations, ranging from high Standards of living, financial support to your parents, a decent home etc. On the ground however, the situation is totally different. Teaching vacancies are scarce, since the government banned recruitment of secondary school teachers to government aided schools in 1997. And yet teacher training institutions have doubled their output — producing teachers every other year since then! For those already employed by government the situation is no better; it was only tending to normal when Prof. Apolo Nsibambi was still Minister of Education. He made teachers’ payments prompt and regular. Teachers’ appointments and confirmation was a regular exercise. Ministry offices were always occupied but not left unattended to. He could even afford to sacrifice time and listen to particular pressing problems of individual teachers. Professionals upgrading of teachers is another menace. They go for upgrading in universities, many times on private sponsorship, since government-sponsored vacancies in the universities are very limited. If the teacher dares to inform the school administration about the course, he/she has undertaken, he/she may be scrapped off the payroll, thrown out of the staff house, if there is any! The teacher then sacrifices his/her merger income for the course. I graduated as a physics/chemistry teacher in 1999 after upgrading and applied for appointment in February 2000. The officer in charge, at 4th floor Room 7 of Embassy house, which now houses the Ministry of Education and Sports, had promised that within the following six months, regularisation of my appointment would be ready. Applying simple arithmetic you can calculate how much money I have wasted on transport alone for the 48 months (journeys) since August 2000 if each return journey to my place of work is Shs 8000. I eventually became bold enough in March 2004 and informed him that it was my right to know what had happened to my application. This time with all the confidence I had accepted his promise of the following month, when I would come to collect my letter. To-date, all my hopes are gone, when he told me that I still have to be patient, since those letter are being typed. The main reason given for the delay in regularisation of appointments is the big number of teachers they have to handle. It is alleged that the numbers may be over teachers. But surely for five years any non bureaucratic officer would surely have produced appointment letters for this number. There are many qualified Ugandans out there who would efficiently and effectively work in these offices to produce results. Then there is this phenomenon called transfer of teachers, where one is transferred from Mpigi district to Kabale district because he is a national public servant. Many marriages and homes have gone to the dogs, because of the phenomenon. The officers in charge of transfers argue that a teacher and not his/her family makes a contract with them. I was transferred to another district in January 2004, which I regard as a normal routine, but in June 2004 I was deleted from the payroll! I have five children at school, two of them in secondary schools and of course other dependants. I am totally at a crossroads. My daily routine is to teach other children, although I am not sure whether mine will go back to school in term three 2004. One really wonders about the credibility of an officer who cannot even bother to look for relevant information before instructing a computer to delete a long serving, dedicated, permanent and pensionable staff. Such an officer is paid at the end of the month to do such work and he/she sends his children to us to teach. During his term of office as Minister of Education Prof. Nsibambi had transformed the ministry and many of these officers knew why they held these offices. The situation is now back and as bad as during Amin’s regime. The life expectancy for Ugandans is 40 years. I am now 39 years and I do not know whether I will live to enjoy the salary of my struggle as a graduate teacher; since I have never been appointed I am still being paid as a Diploma holder. If it was not for teachers being role models and exemplary to society government would have had a series of strikes organised by disgruntled teachers. This teacher requested us to withhold his real name for job security purposes. |
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
