Yumbe schools bear brunt of staff recruitment ban

He said there are 586,072 learners in the district.  Of these, 178,784 are refugees.

“Our enrolment in primary is 173,000 learners, representing 7.8 percent of the population. In the primary section, we have a staffing gap of 372 teachers but we don’t have a wage provision to recruit them,” Mr Luriga said.

He added: “The recruitment for teachers in secondary schools is done at the centre [Ministry of Education and Sports] but we have also realised that the secondary schools have a staffing gap of 124.”

The head teacher of Mijale Primary School, Mr David Okuonzi, said the school has 17 teachers who manage more than 2,000 learners.

“Our school needs government intervention because we are doing badly. The enrolment of the school is 2,112 learners,” he said.

The school has a teacher-pupil ratio that stands at 1:124, which is above the national requirement of 50 learners per teacher.

In some schools, majority of the classes have between two and three streams, which increases the workload for teachers such as marking examination scripts and exercises, among others.

The deputy head teacher of Midigo Seed Secondary School, Mr Abdalatif Adrole, said they are supposed to have 28 members of staff on government payroll but they have a staffing gap of four currently.

“When recruitment was done in 2020, we failed to get four members of the staff for the school, among them two teachers for Biology and Mathematics, one laboratory staff and a nurse. The staffing gap is stressing teachers because of high enrolment,” he said.

He added: “Since we do not have a nurse, most of the cases at the school are referred to  the health centre in Midigo. This disrupts the effective teaching and learning process in the school.”
Ms Shamia Khadija, a Primary Four teacher at Barakala Primary School, said she handles more than 190 learners, which makes it hard for her to satisfy the needs of each learner. 

“I teach English in P.4 class which is streamed into two...When it reaches the time of assessment, it is tedious in marking the learners work and also grading is a problem.”

The Chief Administrative Officer, Mr Stephen Oloya, said: “This year because of the ongoing audit of the payroll, the government has allowed us to do recruitment on a replacement basis and wait for new recruitment after the release of the payroll audit which we are not sure when it will come out,” he said.

He said the issue of the payroll audit will delay recruitment of staff.

The Yumbe District chairperson, Mr Abdulmutwalib Asiku, said they had available wages to recruit some teachers in the last financial year, they sought clearance from the Ministry of Public Service.

“When we made a submission to the ministry [of Public Service] seeking clearance to do recruitment, they did not allow us because it was an overall ban on recruitment. In the Education department, we returned about Shs1.2 billion for both the primary and secondary sections meant for wages last financial year to the Consolidated Fund because things were not very clear,” he said.

Mr Asiku said the recruitment policy should be decentralised to tackle the issue of staffing gaps.