By: Draxon Maloya.
Lilongwe, Malawi. (News of The South)- What was seen as a step towards an improvement towards addressing some of the challenges that demotivate teachers in discharging their duties by earning promotion has become a concern mainly because some names did not appear on the promotion list.
The News Of The South has come across the revelation that government has promoted some teachers who died long ago or else they retired from the teaching service.
School children in Malawi
Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MoEST) Principal Secretary Justin Saidi said the inclusion of names of deceased teachers on the list of 20 210 teachers promoted last week is an error currently being rectified.
He attributed the said error to the use of an electronic system which automatically generated the names of the promoted teachers.
“We can’t hide it is true that there are some names on the list for teachers who are dead, and this is because we used the information from the Department of Human Resources Management which automatically depicted the names. But we are working towards rectifying that anomaly,” Saidi said.
While admitting the error the PS said some relations of the deceased teachers were also to blame as they were yet to submit death certificates to Department of Human Resources Management to facilitate processing of their death gratuities.
The Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM) has for a long time engaged government to consider promoting the teachers mainly those who have remained stagnant on the same grade for more than a decade.
At the moment there is still a stand-off between government and the Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM) on the issue of outstanding arrears for some teachers who were promoted some time back.
However the TUM General Secretary Charles Kumchenga has been on record complaining that he is yet to receive reports of any teacher receiving the long overdue arrears.
“I believe that arrears are attached to salaries so there is no district which has started receiving salaries, there is nowhere in the country where anyone has pocketed any kind of arrears this month,” Kumchenga said.
The Teachers Union of Malawi is a teacher Organization which has experienced several changes in order to match with the educational and political developments taking place in Malawi since 1945.
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