The Sunday News
Munyaradzi Musiiwa, Midlands Correspondent
THE Government has started recruiting teachers to fill in the 3 000 vacant posts that have arisen within the ministry and has already recommended the first batch to the Civil Service Commission (CSC) with rural communities being given first priority.
In an interview, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Mrs Tumisang Thabela, said the Government had already recruited the first batch which would be deployed to rural schools. Mrs Thabela said the initial list has already been submitted to the CSC.
“We announced that we want to recruit 3 000. We are recruiting them in batches and the first batch has been submitted to the CSC. We have recommended the initial lot to the CSC.
“Under this first batch the teachers will be deployed to rural schools and we will then come to urban schools. I have been out of office so at the moment I can’t provide statistics as to how many teachers have been recruited so far,” she said.
Mrs Thabela said the Government has also remained committed to addressing shortages of teachers for vernacular languages.
She said there are 16 languages recognised in the Constitution and teachers’ colleges have started enrolling teachers in those disciplines to address the shortfall.
Mrs Thabela said the teachers’ capacity building was still going on.
Midlands Province has since been allocated about 300 new teachers during the ongoing recruitment exercise to fill in 3 000 teacher vacancies that had arisen within Government. Acting Midlands Provincial Education Director Reverend Tedious Mativenga said each province had been allocated 300 new teachers at a recruitment exercise which was done following the registration of teachers with the ministry.
Rev Mativenga said Midlands had registered about 3 000 teachers throughout the province who had applied for the job vacancies.
“We had an electronic registration exercise in all districts across the country. Those who were registering were asked to select two provinces.
We then collated the information in the province. As a province we registered about 3 000 teachers.
“The information was then sent to Harare where a team comprising people from all provinces then selected the teachers to fill in the vacant posts. So as a province we had done a survey on the appointments that we want to do. We also take into cognisant of vernacular languages.
“The exercise was done recently and as a province we were given 300 teachers 140 of which are for infant, ECD and Grade one and two. We have 1 100 schools and 800 are primaries. Gokwe has a high demand of teachers. We wanted 400 teachers in Gokwe North alone,” he said.
