Our teachers deserve better treatment

The media reported that the State Minister for Public Service Ssezi Mbaguta told teachers who abscond from duty to leave the teaching profession.

Apportioning blame and making teachers the scapegoat for poor performance of the education sector will not take us far. It has become fashionable for all who have the opportunity to address the public to load it on teachers as the cause of the problems dogging the education system, forgetting that we are all stakeholders.

The media reported that the State Minister for Public Service Ssezi Mbaguta told teachers who abscond from duty to leave the teaching profession. She said she was aware that they were engaging in other activities like the boda boda business. This was while she was appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on education and sports.

The Daily Monitor of May 3 also carried a story titled, “Increment of teachers’ pay still uncertain.” To make matters worse, on the same day, many teachers received messages from their banks that they had either not been paid their April salaries or had got bits of them, a scenario that has been going on for close to a year now.

On April 30 the Daily Monitor also reported that the director for Higher Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Ms Elizabeth Gabona, had advised teachers to stop lamenting about meager salaries.

Many leaders have continued to spitefully tell off teachers that their request for better pay is either unrealistic, unnecessary or undeserved! Quite often, when MPs debate their pay raise and vehicle loans or grants, we don’t hear any minister telling them to leave Parliament and leave those who want ordinary vehicles or less pay to keep legislating.
We continue to witness the maginalisation of the providers of education in this country.

Education is not the only sector that is suffering. Health, the Police and the army are equally affected.
The country has of late had many army desertions which have also been attributed to poor pay. Interestingly it is usually the lower rank officers that are affected.

Telling people who ask for better pay to leave their jobs is diversionary. We have seen doctors leaving the country to the detriment of Ugandans.

The level of death is telling! Indeed teachers have also left. The most recent record talked of more than 70 teachers from Kabale leaving for Rwanda. When these civil servants leave, it is usually the best of the stock that are fished out to other sectors or countries. Secondly, it is the poor who are mainly affected. Before we blame these teachers for inefficiency, do we ever pause to consider their financial plight and obligations?

I do not condone absenteeism or provision of sub-standard services or doing shoddy work. These can be addressed by workers’ immediate supervisors, if only they too shall have the moral authority to put hungry people to work.

Nevertheless, in all honesty, whoever gets the opportunity to hold the national cake and the knife, let them always remember that everyone gets hungry and that no mouth feeds for another.

Assa Arinaitwe Ngabirano,
Mpara SS