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Minister Dokora

Lovemore Mataire Senior Reporter
At least 9 000 temporary teachers are set to lose their jobs to qualified teachers as the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education moves to employ trained personnel.

In an interview after his address at the Joint Command and Staff Course Number 28 at Zimbabwe Staff College in Harare last Wednesday, the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Lazarus Dokora said his ministry was inviting all trained teachers to apply for teaching posts at primary and secondary schools throughout the country.

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“All trained teachers who are unemployed must be employed. All those who were employed as teachers and signed illegal or dubious contracts to teach at whatever school must be redeployed where their skills are needed and let qualified personnel take their places,” said Dr Dokora.

Dr Dokora said the rationalisation exercise was in line with some of the recommendations of the 1999 Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (CIET), commonly referred to as the Nziramasanga Commission.

He said the process of hiring qualified personnel would be completed by May 1, 2015.

He said time was ripe for the education sector to establish its own Professional Educational Council of Zimbabwe to standardise the teaching practice.

“It is against this background that my ministry has reviewed the education curriculum based upon the recommendations of the Commission of Enquiry into Education and Training of 1999,” said Dr Dokora.

He said despite the challenges that Zimbabwe faced over the last decade, the Zanu-PF Government had ensured that the fundamental architecture of the country’s internationally acclaimed system of education remained intact as evidenced by the high literacy rate.

“This unquestionable architecture has tenaciously withstood the unprecedented regime change pressures that have, among other things, sought to make its subversive point by seeking to demolish the pillars of the country’s system of education,” said Dr Dokora.

He said the Nziramasanga Commission had also recommended the adoption of “ubuntu” or “unhu” as the overarching philosophy guiding the education system in the country.

He said the “ubuntu” philosophy was an African philosophy of humanism, a world view that distinguishes Africans from other citizens of the world yet shares most of what is universally accepted as goodness with the rest of the human race.