Government ditches non Five Leveled' ECD teachers for untrained O'Level holders

The Ministry of Primary and secondary Schools headed by Lazaras Dokora has ditched hundreds of trained non O'level holders teachers who were employed by the Schools Development Committees in Matabeleland South and imposed the appointment of school levers who are not trained but have five ordinary level subjects to the schools.

Disgruntled teachers who went to train for Early Childhood Education teaching at the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Polytechnic before they got attached to various schools in the province said they were surprised in the past week to hear their headmasters telling them to cease work after the ministry deployed O'level holders to the schools. But the development has not been favourable to the children who are supposed to be taught by their O'level holders as it emerged that they have no clue as to how to start teaching the young children and wanted to benefit from the teachers who are now being ditched.

A teacher at a school in Gwanda said the ECD teacher at the school was last week told to stop working.

"We were surprised to see a new teacher who was deployed by the ministry at our school to teach ECD while we still had another teacher," said a qualified Grade 3 teacher.

"To our surprise it appears the people who were deployed by the ministry are just form fours with five O'levels but have not been trained to teach ECD. The bad part of it is that the ECD teachers who are now being chucked out were taken for training at J M Nkomo Polytechnic and know how to do the job although they were not employed by government but by the parents but there are far much better than these "O' level holders who have not even a clue on how to teach ECD."

The ECD teachers who are being ditched by government were employed by the school authorities through the blessing of the ministry but were paid by the schools. Some of them say they have been teaching the ECD for more than ten years and being poorly paid and it was painful that after all this sacrifice they are just being dumped all of a sudden without adequate notice.

"How can one tell you that you must stop coming to work tomorrow? Proper labour procedures states that one has to be given three months notice before termination of contract and this is not what happened with us," she said.

Another ditched ECD teacher said she was being give $30 per months and they stopped her without giving her her pay for several months.

Another ECD teachers said she got the shocking news when the O'level holder visited the school indicating that she was deployed by the ministry and the depute head master told the ECD teacher that she should stop there and there.

The affected teachers said considering the fact that they were being under paid by the schools and now they are being unfairly dismissed from work they will take legal action against the school so that they get proper pay they were supposed to be getting all along since they started working for the schools.

Efforts to get comment from the Matabeleland South Provincial Education Director Tumisang Thabela were fruitless.