Government ordered to investigate deployment of Shona speaking teachers into Matabeleland

Gwanda based activist Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo has written a letter to the Gwanda District Education Officer demanding the Ministry to investigate allegations of continuous deployment of Shona speaking teachers into Gwanda district schools.

Among other issues for investigation are allegations of corruption in the deployment of teachers into the district.

Full contents of the letter sent to the District Education Officer reads as follows:


To: The District Education Officer Gwanda

Cc: The Provincial Education Director Mat South

Cc: The District Administrator Gwanda

Dear Sir,

Audit into the enrolment and deployment of teachers into Gwanda schools

I sincerely hope that I find you well sir and in good spirit.

My name is Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo. I am a bona fides child and resident of Gwanda as a district.

I was born here in Gwanda, bred here in Gwanda, wishing to die in Gwanda and certainly going to be buried in Gwanda.

Because of my deep rooted origin and love of my home area, I have over the years developed myself into an activist fighting for the development of Gwanda and the well being of us it's citizens.

I serve in a number of Gwanda community development initiatives and also as a residents representative in some sectors. Over and above that I consider myself a political player of repute within our district and so always find myself bound by conscience to make sure that the people of Gwanda never find themselves short changed in any regard.

It is no secret that over the years Gwanda district has been amongst the worst performing districts if not the worst throughout the country in terms of public examinations results be they Grade 7, Ordinary Level or Advanced Level.

When concerns started being raised on the perennial poor results from our schools, the first point of call was that the district generally lacked a culture for the desire of education.

We noted that with concern and gave those accusing us along those lines the benefit of the doubt. We took it upon ourselves to educate our communities on the importance of putting education as a priority in our culture as accused.

Seeing the amount of progress done on the concern, we strongly believe that we can no longer be found wanting in that regard as a community even though the process is still on going.

However, as we meet as communities and try to make an analysis of how we are progressing in educating our children there always arise a concern that your Ministry is deploying "wrong" teachers into our schools.

"Wrong" in two senses viz; some of the teachers deployed to the schools are not essentially qualified to teach and secondly that some teachers are deployed into communities that do not speak the teacher's language.

I am very confident that this is not the first time you are hearing this concern from the people within the district you serve.

You will appreciate, sir, without a measure of doubt that Gwanda is certainly the rainbow district of the country as the communities here speak at least six of the country's sixteen languages and practise these languages in culture too.

Every time when this concern  is raised we always get an excuse, not reason, that Gwanda is fed with these teachers because there are no readily available qualified teachers of Gwanda orientation to fill the vacancies available.

Surprisingly after every engagement and deployment of teachers process by your Ministry with the help of the Public Service Commission, as community leaders, we always get complaints from our very own Gwanda children with qualifications claiming to have been left out of the system.

With every complaint comes allegations of corruption and bribery having taken place in the engagement of the teachers another allegation which I am definite you are not hearing for the first time.

It is therefore with regard to these complaints and allegations that we as a community of the district you serve ask that you effect immediate investigations into the following:

1) Thorough investigation into the process and criteria that was used in the deployment of teachers into your district in just the last five years to make it simpler.

We need to understand why and how we still find our schools with untrained teachers while there is scores of trained teachers roaming the districts looking for teaching vacancies and what your Ministry has done on whatever is causing that.

2) Investigate on the number of teachers who can not speak the language of the local community serving in the district contrary to your Ministry's employment guidelines that priority should be given to teachers conversant with the language and the culture of that area and why the guidelines were deliberately ignored in the first place.

3) Thorough investigations into the corruption allegations raised against those in charge of recruiting and deployment of the teachers into the district.

4) Investigate and if true why and how there maybe few or no teachers with a Gwanda background qualified to teach in our schools yet we have a teachers' training college which is meant to have a bias towards producing teachers compacted to the requirements of the region.

Is your district in the Ministry happy with the quality of teachers produced by the college in terms of orientation and what has your Ministry done about it if not happy as obviously expected?

I sincerely hope to hear from your esteemed office in as little a period as you can possibly take as we strive to collectively fight to educate the children of Gwanda.

Sincerely

Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo

Fuzwayo can be contacted on his email bekezelamaduma@yahoo.co.uk