Parents expel lazy teachers

By Charles Kakamwa

For three days, pupils at Kisima II Primary School in Jinja municipality missed lessons after parents closed the school.

The parents also sent away the teachers over persistent late-coming and absenteeism. When teachers arrived for duty last Thursday, they were confronted by a group of angry parents who threatened to beat them up if they dared enter the classrooms.

Francis Okello, the headmaster, said the parents ordered the teachers to go back to their homes immediately, a call the teachers heeded for fear or being roughed up whilechildren watched.

The standoff between parents and teachers prompted a stakeholders meeting at the school on Monday to discuss their grievances, before the school was re-opened by the principal municipal education officer, Jonathan Kamwana.

During the meeting chaired by Kamwana, the parents accused the teachers of having a poor attitude towards their work, adding that it was affecting the school’s academic performance.

The Universal Primary Education school located on Kisima Islands in Walukuba/ Masese division had its first batch of candidates last year but none of the pupils passed in division one.

It has 130 pupils and seven teachers who commute by boat from the mainland (Jinja town) where they live.

“Teachers arrive at 10:00am and leave by 3:00pm. If they are not ready to serve, let them resign. We have Senior 4 and S.6 leavers here who can take over and serve us diligently,”

Florence Namisi, a parent, said. She wondered why some of the teachers do not occupy the staff house in the school compound. Kamwana revealed that female teachers left the islands for fear of sexual harassment.

“They ran away because men used to knock on their doors throughout the night demanding for sex,” he said.

Kamwana condemned the failure by some staff to teach, describing it as sabotage of the Government’s development programmes.

He explained that despite being a remote area, government has tried to improve conditions on the islands and called for teamwork from the stakeholders.