Webster Malido
31 January 2004
Lusaka — THE government has failed to deploy more than 9,000 trained teachers to schools around the country because of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) budget conditionalities.
Explaining the failure by the government to employ teachers trained in 2002 and 2003, education minister Andrew Mulenga yesterday disclosed that the problem was not about lack of resources but the conditions given by the two institutions for the government not to spend more than 8 per cent of Zambia's gross domestic product (GDP) on wages in the budget.
"Those are the instructions given to government," he said.
Mulenga said of the required 58,000 teachers across the country, there were only close to 50,000 at the moment.
He said because of the ceiling point put to the government by the World Bank and the IMF, the government had failed to put on government payroll the 9,000 trained teachers "who are currently languishing".
Mulenga said to employ the 9,000 teachers, the government would spend about K76 billion, which would go against the ceiling point given by the World Bank and IMF.
He said the conditionality was understandable as it would help the country reach the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) completion point which would in turn release more resources into sectors like education and health.
But Mulenga said this was not to say that the government had ignored the problem.
On the logic for donors to keep rehabilitating schools and purchasing desks for schools which had no teachers, Mulenga said it was difficult because donors decide on what projects they want to support.
He said he would equally prefer that more teachers are recruited as opposed to have more desks in schools without teachers.
Mulenga appealed to co-operating partners to negotiate for the government with the World Bank and the IMF on the need to have the teachers employed to avert the current shortage which was at a provincial average of 1,000 teachers.
On the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the teaching profession, Mulenga said an estimated K500 million would be budgeted for the Ministry of Education this year for HIV/AIDS activities to help fight the disease.
He said it would be up the ministry and the unions to decide on how the money would be spent.
But Mulenga said he would have preferred a situation where the money was channelled to medical institutions so that teachers can access free antiretrovirals (ARVs) to prolong their lives.
He said much as the money may be spent on campaigns, a lot of awareness has been done and there was need now to start giving actual treatment to those infected.
"It's better we treat teachers so that we prolong their lives," Mulenga said. "If we did that, we can save the lives of those that we are losing and the value for the K500 million will be fully realised."
But Mulenga said the difficult was that most teachers do not want to come out in the open about their HIV/AIDS status.
And Mulenga clarified the position on grade seven examinations, saying the government had not done away with them.
He said the position by the government was to keep upgrading all primary schools into basic schools so that pupils can go as far as grade nine and that eventually grade seven exams would naturally phase themselves out.
Mulenga said a lot of primary schools had been upgraded into basic schools, especially with assistance from the Zambia Social Investment Fund (ZAMSIF).
He said ZAMSIF had done a lot in terms of putting up classroom blocks and building teachers' houses.
However, Mulenga said the ZAMSIF assistance alone was not sufficient to completely overhaul the education sector.
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