Employ 5,000 teachers annually’

GOVERNMENT should employing at least 5,000 teachers annually for the next five years, Professional Teachers Union of Zambia (PROTUZ) has suggested.

PROTUZ Secretary General, Kangwa Musenga, said that a phased employing of teachers was more practical as there were about 50,000 trained teachers who are not employed.In an interview with Daily Nation in Livingstone to mark this year's Teacher’s Day commemoration, Mr Musenge said that according to the budgetary allocation for the 2021 budget could employ 2,500 teachers.

“We welcome the decision by the Ministry of Education to employ more teachers this year. We would like to advise the ministry to employ teachers in phases so that all the teachers who are on the streets can be absorbed in the only teaching service,” he said.

Mr Musenga said once the teachers were employed, they would help reduce the pupil to teacher ratio in the country which was high.

Pupil-teacher ratio, for primary in Zambia was 42.06 as of 2017 while the highest value over the past 47 years was 57.01 in 2006 and the lowest value was 38.19 in 1996.

He said that as a way of supplementing Government's efforts, his union had employed 10 volunteer teachers in different parts of the country.

Mr Musenga said this was an efforts of trying to absorb professionals who were not employed. He said Government should also pay out all the retirees so that the payroll could accommodate new teachers.

“The retirees should be paid their money so that it becomes easy for the Government to employ more teachers because without the removal on the payroll of retired teachers, it would be difficult to sustain the system,” Mr Musenga said.