Teachers raise concerns ahead of reopening schools

Students at the Old Taxi Park in Kampala await transport back to school early this year. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • The teachers want government to pay them a risk allowance and recruit more staff to meet the recommended four-metre social distance rule between the learners, among others.
  • Mr Patrick Muinda, an assistant commissioner, who sometimes speaks for the Ministry of Education, told Sunday Monitor yesterday that the ministry is in the process of working out a comprehensive plan that will address most of the questions in the public domain.

With just hours to the end of the two-week period in which the Ministry of Education is expected to release a work plan on reopening of education institutions to final year students, sections of the teaching community are raising new concerns about their safety and working conditions once the institutions reopen.

Last week, the teachers under their umbrella Uganda National Teachers’ Union (Unatu), wrote to the Ministry of Education calling on government to pay teachers a risk allowance, recruit more staff to meet the recommended four-metre social distance rule between the learners, provide resident nurses for every school, fumigate all schools and ensure that institutions meet standard operating procedures (SOPs) issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

In the letter signed by Unatu secretary general Filbert Baguma, and addressed to Mr Alex Kakooza, the Permanent Secretary in the Education ministry, the teachers have also asked government to provide schools with temperature monitors, face masks, water supply, soap and other disinfectants, isolation rooms and emergency transport.

Mr Baguma told this newspaper on Friday that the ministry was yet to meet officials of his organisations over the issues they raised.
“They (Ministry of Education) told us we would be invited to one of their meetings to address some of those issues, but they have not yet gotten back to us,” Mr Baguma said in a telephone interview.

However, even before the ministry responds to the issues, Unatu has raised other issues through mail that has been circulating on various teachers’ forums, suggesting that whereas safety issues continue to dominate the space, there are a lot more questions that are being asked.

These include safety of teachers, marking of books, access to free medication in case one contracts the virus, compensation in case of death and risk allowance when schools reopen.
Others are insufficient allowance ($40 or Shs150,000), teachers being able to carry out lessons with masks on for 35 minutes, teachers with health complications that make it easy for them to contract or succumb to Covid-19, among others.

Dr Edward Nector Mwavu, the vice chairpersom of Makerere University Academic Staff Association (Muasa), said the association had not yet subjected some of the issues that are being raised to scrutiny.

“We have been teaching online students on the Masters’ Degree programmes, but we have not been doing so for undergraduate programmes. Right now we do not know whether their coursework scripts pose a risk, but we are going to have a meeting on Monday. We might address ourselves to some of those issues,” Dr Mwavu told Sunday Monitor on Friday.

Mr Baguma said some of the issues such as compensation in case one contracts the virus in the course of their duty were not captured, but hastened to add that teachers are captured under the Workers’ Compensation Act of 2000.

Section 4(1) of the Act provides says: “Where the deceased worker leaves any family members who are dependent on his or her earnings, the amount of compensation shall be a sum equal to sixty times his or her monthly earning.”

However, the chairman general of National Organisation of Trade Unions (NOTU), Mr Usher Wilson Owere, said whereas teachers are captured under the Act, it only provides for compensation for workers who suffer fatal injuries in the course of work.
“The Act covers every worker, but there are those dangerous and rather strange cases such as Ebola and Covid-19. It is not specific to them. It is not clear on that,” Mr Owere said.

However, the discussion is not about the teachers alone. There are specific safety issues being raised around the schools. These include what next if a student shows symptoms of Covid-19 during the course of learning, how frequent should temperature tests be done, whether one temperature monitoring machine can test up to 80 students before each learning session, who will test the temperatures of the students given that teachers are not paid for that, what happens if schools run out of sanitisers, who takes over if the teacher is in self quarantine, among others.

Mr Patrick Muinda, an assistant commissioner, who sometimes speaks for the Ministry of Education, told Sunday Monitor yesterday that the ministry is in the process of working out a comprehensive plan that will address most of the questions in the public domain.

More questions
Some of the questions that are intended for the Ministry of Education are:
1. Do schools have enough desks and classrooms to maintain social distance?

2. Is the ministry able to employ more teachers since the teacher to pupil ratio is bound to decrease?

3. How many teachers are needed per school?