Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MoEST) has sacked 52 teachers for having love affairs and impregnating their students.<\/p>\n
The Ministry\u2019s Public Relations Officer, Rebecca Phwitiko, confirmed this development, adding that the dismissals happened between January 2013 and December 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are from several districts but this doesn\u2019t give a true picture of most cases of immoral conduct. The 52 teachers are only those that were dismissed,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cThere are other cases that haven\u2019t yet been submitted to Teaching Service Commission (TSC); either because the district level investigation hasn\u2019t been finalised or any other reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Education analysts have since commended government for this development, describing it as a landmark decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is better than transferring teachers perpetrating sexual abuse of school girls. MoEST has the professional and moral duty to protect the girls of this country from sexual predators who masquerade as teachers,\u201d noted a social policy analyst, Roy Hauya.<\/p>\n
He further said the number may sound like tokenism but it is a fair warning to those who may be or would be violators.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI bet thousands have had relationships with school children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Executive Director for Civil Society Education Coalition (CSEC), Benedicto Kondowe, said his office received lots of reports about teacher-pupil relations but was wondering why they were not being punished.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am glad that 52 teachers have been disciplined in this manner. Of course the number of perpetrators is more than that but I assume this is the beginning of it all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to MoEST, if a teacher is suspected to have been having inappropriate relations with a student, a submission is made to the TSC after a thorough investigation by the reporting office, be it district education office or education division office on the alleged cas .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Human Resource Directorate in the Ministry of Education ensures that appropriate supporting evidence is available before forwarding a submission to TSC. Evidence includes written reports from the teacher, student, head teacher, school committee and parents,\u201d Phwitiko explained.<\/p>\n
She, however, cited contradictions in the given written evidence; refusal by some involved parties to provide evidence, students\u2019 parents and the teacher collaborating to have the teacher marry the student, provision of false information or change of statements and loss of vital information due to lack of adherence to investigation procedures as some of the main challenges to have such cases completed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MoEST) has sacked 52 teachers for having love affairs and impregnating their students. The Ministry\u2019s Public Relations Officer, Rebecca Phwitiko, confirmed this development, adding that the dismissals happened between January 2013 and December 2015. \u201cThese are from several districts but this doesn\u2019t give a true picture of most cases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16546,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541\/revisions\/16546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}