By Solomon Hamala
IGANGA
The Ministry of Education and Sports has resolved to start punishing school heads who knowingly keep maintaining teachers transferred to other schools/institutions.
This was revealed by the Commissioner Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) in the Ministry of Education, Loy Muhwezi yesterday 31st January, 2022.
Muhwezi was speaking during the closure of a five day training for vocational schools departmental heads at Iganga technical institute.
She said the Ministry of Education recently resolved to hold accountable any school head who will deliberately allow any member of staff to operate illegally in a school having been notified of being transferred to another duty station.
“As a ministry we are likely to deduct salaries of the school heads for six months or interdict him or her from duty,” she said.
Muhwezi who was flanked by the head of operations, technical vocational education training (TVET) in the ministry of education, David Mubiru urged teachers to always seek to further their education in a bid to avoid being kicked out from their positions due to lack of required academic qualifications.
“Teachers have always been complaining of over staying in their positions for long periods of time not knowing that they have one weakness, failing to upgrade,” she said.
She also urged teachers to set up income generating activities to improve on their household incomes instead of always making excessive demands to government for salary increments.
Muhwezi cautioned teachers against borrowing from money lenders because they risk losing their assets that would have been staked as collateral.
She further revealed that the ministry of education no longer has interest in stocking school libraries due to the poor attitude of learners to read books and instead adopted a program of sensitizing learners to use smart phones to seek knowledge.
“We have made extensive research and discovered that most books are lying idle in libraries with a very small number of learners,” she said.
Muhwezi said the new TVET curriculum introduced by the ministry of education is not aimed at kicking out teachers from their positions but instead adopt to the new learning scheme after the two year COVID 19 break.
The commissioner human resource in the ministry of education, Ronald Kiberu said the recent validation exercise being conducted in all schools is aimed at phasing out ghost teachers from the payroll.
Kiberu said the education ministry has adopted a policy to conduct regional transfers of personnel from technical institutions to ensure they stay closer to their families.
“Previously someone could be transferred to a distant area making it difficult to connect with families,” he said.
He appealed to government to allow students pursuing construction courses at technical institutions to build or carry out renovation of all government structures in schools countrywide in a bid to reduce on costs of labor.
Jane Axhzua, a tutor at Arua technical institute expressed concern over the poor attitude of parents towards vocational education.
Axhzua said majority of technical institutions have been fully stocked with equipment courtesy of government but few students have enrolled during the past few years saying it is for failures.
“Some of our people still have that belief that vocational courses are for failures,” she said.
The head of operations technical vocational education training (TVET) ministry of education, David Mubiru said similar trainings’ are to be conducted annually ensure teachers get equipped with modern techniques of passing out information to learners.
A total of 39 participants drawn from 17 technical institutions country wide took part in the five day training.
