Punish striking teachers, district leaders tell government

Teachers under their umbrella body, the Uganda National Teachers Union, in a meeting at Statistics House recently. District leaders want the teachers penalised for failing to report to their respective duty stations during the strike. PHOTO BY STEPHEN WANDERA. 

By PATIENCE AHIMBISIBWE AL-MAHDI SSENKABIRWA

In Summary

The Daily Monitor comes across letters by chief administration officers urging the Prime Minister to rein in on teachers.

Kampala

Although the government had promised not to penalise teachers who took part in the recent strike, district leaders have begun sending reports to the government, urging the latter to take action against head teachers who kept way from their duty stations during the eight–day industrial action, the Daily Monitor has learnt.

Some of the reports sent from districts indicate that chief administration officers (CAOs) have compiled the names of head teachers who never reported for duty during the strike that started on September 9.

In one of the letters, the Gomba District CAO, Mr Elias Bwamungu, says although classroom teachers had gone on strike, head teachers were supposed to report to schools, yet many in the district did not. Out of the 56 primary schools he visited, he says only six were found open during the strike.

CAOs’ evidence
“This means that I have evidence of abscondment by some of the primary school head teachers. The September 9, 2013 collective industrial action announced by Unatu notwithstanding, head teachers form part of administration and should take extra care while involving themselves in unionised activities… ,” Mr Bwamungu said in his September 23 letter to Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.

He said the teachers’ action was unreasonable and unfair since schools have to operate like police stations and health facilities which keep open even during a time of crisis. “Legally, it is tantamount to a tort of negligence .We the civil servants are the extra hand of the State. Folding the hand is treasonable and actionable because we individually apply for jobs and individually fail or succeed until we retire,” he said.

The CAOs were responding to an earlier circular issued by the Local Government ministry, which required them to report any cases of absenteeism during the strike.

Before going into negotiations with teachers, which consequently led the latter to suspend the strike, the government had threatened to delete from the payroll any teacher who takes part in the strike. But in a joint statement issued after teachers called off the strike, the government promised that teachers would not be victimised for participating in the strike.

In one of the correspondences dated October 1, Unatu secretary general James Tweheyo wrote back to the CAO for Gomba, saying he and other CAOs in other districts had overstretched their mandate and the issue they were raising had been overtaken by events.

Unatu responds
“ …It appears you have not been so keen on following the talks between government and Unatu because if you were, you would have known by now that we reached consensus on some matters and one of which was for the government to issue a circular to all local government leaders not to victimise or harass any teachers for participating in the industrial action,” Mr Tweheyo’s letter reads in part. When Unatu staged a strike in 2011 over poor pay ,thousands teachers who participated were reportedly deleted from the pay roll under the guise of removing ‘ghosts’ and many not have been getting their salaries for several months.