Maputo, 9 Jul (AIM) – The Mozambican Education Ministry lacks is short of around 16,000 new teachers across the country because of budgetary constraints.
The shortage of new teachers in the National Education System forces the existing teachers to work overtime, as well as night shifts, which harms the quality of teaching because of work overload.
Recently, the teachers have complained that they are not even being paid for overtime and night shifts. Mozambique’s National Teachers’ Association (ANAPRO) has threatened to boycott lessons and go on strike because the government has not pay them for months of overtime they have worked.
In addition to these wages arrears, the teachers protest that they are forced to work with classes of over 100 pupils, which worsens still further the quality of education.
According to Ministry spokesperson, Manuel Simbine, speaking during the institution’s Planning Meeting, which began on Monday, in the central province of Tete, the government should hire around 12,000 new teachers per year for the various education subsystems, a figure that is far from being reached due to budgetary constraints.
“We are talking about teachers with psycho-pedagogical training for the various teaching careers, with the skills to teach most of the subjects set out in the sector’s curriculum plan. However, as long as there is no funding available to remedy the situation, the sector will have to find alternatives that include overtime and shifts”, he said.
Over the last five years, Simbine said, the sector should have hired around 47,000 teachers. However, just over 31,000 teachers were hired.
“This is a challenge for this planning meeting, in projecting the figures for 2025, so that we can make up for this deficit of teachers”, Simbine said.
He also explained that regarding the overtime and shift payment owed to some teachers, “in due course, when the sector finalizes the process, it will be possible to report on this”, he said.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently been lecturing the Mozambican government on the size of the wage bill for the public administration, claiming it is far too large. Apparently the IMF is unaware that the majority of public administration workers are not pen-pushing bureaucrats, but teachers, nurses, police agents and other essential staff.
(AIM)
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