Teachers Petition Over Service Termination

By Raynel Kanyambu About 15 teachers from Ruyonza school in Bushenyi have petitioned the commissioner of education over "unfair termination of their services". In a february 2 letter copied to over 10 officers and the minister of public service, the teachers accuse their headmaster Mr. Francis Muhereza, of terminating their services without following the guidelines and a prior warning. But Muhereza said terminations were made in respect to the new guidelines of the ministry of education in which a full-time teacher is required to teach a minimum load of 26 lessons per week. The letter terminating the teachers' services reads "you have been affected by the ministry guidelines after you failed to raise the required work load of 26 lessons." A ministry of education official recently said the exercise of retrenching people was an order from the world Bank, which wanted a small number of teachers who could be well paid. The petition accused Muhereza of victimising the teachers. They said Muhereza should not have replaced them with other teachers who were neither appointed nor on the payroll. Despite the district education officer's intervention and that of the permanent secretary of the ministry of education, the reinstatement has been deferred. Over 300 secondary school teachers in Bushenyi district alone are likely to be retrenched if the new ministry guidelines come into effect, an education official said. He said an average of 20 teachers are likely to be retrenched from secondary schools of St. Kaggwa boys school, Bweranyangi girls' school, Kyeizooba girls' school Nganwa, Masheruka, and Mushanga secondary schools. The district service commission chairman, Dr. Richard Nduhura, said they had not started handling secondary schools, and that Muhereza's act was wrongly implemented at such a time. Ends