Maputo, 15 Oct (AIM) – Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has admitted that his government is well informed that there are many pupils studying while sitting on the floor as a result of lack of desks in the country’s public schools.
According to Nyusi, who was speaking at a meeting with the country’s National Organization of Teachers (ONP) as part of the “Day of the Mozambican Teacher” which was celebrated on 12 October, the government knows the problems faced by the education sector, but is forced to favor other priorities because of financial constraints.
“The government knows that there are students who study sitting on the floor. That’s nothing new, we know that. You know very well the difficulties the country is going through. Sometimes you have to choose. If you only have 100 million meticais, you have to give teachers their wages first. You have to build a classroom, put in desks, buy exercise books. You can’t do everything with that amount of money”, he said.
In order to get the children off the floor, the President said, the government travelled all over the country to identify wood for producing school desks.
“This is an operation that hasn’t been completed, due to many adversities, but we’ve launched it successfully”, he claimed. “When people say that the country has a lot of wood, what do they mean? It’s not a discovery, they haven’t discovered anything”.
Nyusi, whose five year term of office as President is coming to an end, claims that his government has achieved unquestionable results when it comes to literacy.
Between 2015 and now, the illiteracy rate had fallen from 45 to 38 per cent.
A further success was enrolling the vast majority of children in primary school. “We reached a net enrolment rate of 98.7%. I’m saying that out of every 100 children aged six, 99 are entering first grade”, Nyusi said.
Nyusi objected to criticism of Mozambique’s friendly relations with Rwanda. “Our brothers in Rwanda, in their social activity, built and rehabilitated a school. Everyone questioned it”, he said. “Why didn’t they question the European Union when it built a school? Why didn’t they question China when it built an institute? What’s the problem?”
(AIM)
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