Blantyre rural teachers under the Open Distance Learning (ODL 2) and Initial Primary Teachers Education program (IPTE 7) have warned Blantyre District Education Management (DEM) that they are going to conduct demonstrations if the management will not give them their 18 months hardship allowances.
Godfrey Malefula who is representing the teachers told Malawi Muslim Website that they have been getting monthly salaries only without the hardship allowances for more than 18 months which government promised them the thing, they feel is unfair since other teachers from other districts such as Mulanje, Thyolo and chiladzulu are getting the allowances every month.
“We are very surprised to see that only those teachers who were deployed in Blantyre rural are not getting these allowances while others are receiving. We went to the DEM offices on Friday but it seems like they don’t care about us since they were just pushing the issue from one office to another,” said Malefula.
Malefula said they believe that the Ministry of Education releases these allowances every month but there is someone who is benefiting from their sweat which is K180,000 per teacher.
“We believe that the DEM office gets this money but there is someone who is using it and you can agree with me that it can’t happen for the government to forget only Blantyre rural teachers. We have given them an ultimatum of four weeks to sort out our concerns failing which, we will conduct demonstrations on 1st December,” he said.
One of the officials at the DEM office said this is not their fault since the government has not been giving them this money that’s why they are failing to assist them accordingly.
“It is true that these teachers came here on Friday with their concerns that they are not receiving their hardship allowances for 18 months now but I think it can be good to find out from the ministry of education science and technology may be they can provide good answers for their concerns,” he said
In her remarks spokesperson in the ministry of education science and technology Rebecca Phwitiko said they haven’t been receiving any complaints from these teachers on this issue and said she is not aware that there is this problem.
Phwitiko asked to be given a time to look into the issue so that she can disclose the source of this problem and also asked the teachers to be patient to be assisted accordingly.
“Our ministry never received any complaints from these teachers and am very surprised why they were just waiting for the whole 18 months. I will need enough time so that we should look into this matter€€,” she said
