Unemployed teachers accuse gov't of exploitation
Victoria Marumo | Friday May 18, 2018 10:06
The teacher graduates who are struggling to be absorbed into their respective trained post are crying exploitation by government, especially now the employer has resorted to hiring them on contractual basis.
During a press briefing championed by a new movement, ‘Unemployed graduate teachers’ to represent the aggrieved graduates, the group spoke against contractual employment.
They have called the move by government a precarious and exploitative one as it hampers development of one’s professional careers effectively as also it was not in the best interest of service to employ teachers on a two months basis considering the exigency and nature of duties.
The chairperson for the movement, Kesaobaka Ditshike said the teacher-student psychological relationship should not be a temporary arrangement that can be halted at any time, as is the fashion in the teaching service today.
“Government should realise the need to employ teachers on a permanent basis. This need is uncontested as clearly there demand in all institutions as is also demonstrated by government continued training of more teachers,” he said.
On the importation of foreign teachers, Ditshike said, as it seems the government was not committed to its localisation policy especially with private teaching institutions.
The huge number of foreign teachers providing services which Batswana are properly versed with has irked the members as they reckon it fails them as capable graduates.
He said statistics keep on revealing a large number of trained teachers remain unemployed despite the fact that public funds were utilised to train them on various subjects and various levels.
Ditshike said that the government needed to realise that training teachers and ultimately not employing them was a waste of government resources.
“Imagine apparently government has taken a decision that when we reach 45 without permanent employment we would never be employed on that basis, rather on perpetual contracts while surprisingly they still harbors teachers of the oldest ages that transcend retirement age,” he noted.
Members of the association feel they have been ignored for far too long and that enough was enough.
Though they have acknowledged how unemployment was a critical part of any economy, they stated how it becomes unacceptable when the crisis matures to graduate unemployment.
“Such a crisis occupies the centre stage of economic planning of any country that bothers about the future of its citizens. Measures to ensure that public funds committed towards skills acquisition do not run to waste should be put in place” said Ditshike.
The movement will petition the Minister of Basic education on Thursday next week.