“DONT CALL THE PEOPLE OF MANYINGA PRIMITIVE FOR REJECTING TEACHERS FROM OTHER PROVINCES, THEIR PLIGHT IS GENUINE.”
Dear Editor,
I have lived in Manyinga for 20 years now but I am not a Northwesterner because I came here for work. I have never been mistreated but what I have seen is love and care from Northwesterners. I have once worked from Kabompo and Zambezi, the people are caring and welcoming.
However, I have noted with great concern that the majority in this country have misunderstood the Manyinga district elders.
What they are fighting for is a genuine concern that should be addressed with the seriousness it deserves. These people have never complained but when they do pay attention.
Do you really think it is fair to bring people elsewhere to be deployed here as teachers instead of the locals who have been volunteering? You really think that is fair and they shouldn’t complain?
Let me tell you why they are angry; during the previous recruitment in 2021, Manyinga recieved some teachers who as we speak already left the district. They abandoned rural schools all because they couldn’t cope staying in the village. Ask me who took the responsibility of teaching in these schools? It’s the unemployed local teachers. Who was paying them? The parents would contribute anything they can afford for the local volunteers to teach their children. And you really think they are being tribal to complain that the volunteers have been left out again?
The government was clear, ‘employ the local people to avoid transfers’ but that hasn’t been the case here, it’s like people use the district to get jobs and then run away after some months leaving learners without teachers. From a neutral perspective, that’s unfair and the Manyinga elders have the right to complain.
You don’t need to be a northwesterner to understand the plight of the locals.
In this province, that’s where you will find the nicest people in this country. They have embraced some of us and even given us land to farm. They treat me like their own and I have no intentions of going back where I came from. Listen to their concern and don’t rush into calling them tribal.
Don’t call them primitive, their concern is genuine.
—FROM A MANYINGA RESIDENT
The observation is correct people use rural areas to get employment and eventualy abandon rural areas and look for reasons get out of rural areas. It is either the forge fake marriages certificates or use witchcraft allegations that the areas are infested with witches and wizards and use all sorts of excuses leave rural areas to better areas. While employing especially local people who were teaching on voluntary basis will make even the young ones to have role models and encourage them to work hard. On the other hand, locally employed people will never despise their own areas where they come from and will work hard to teach with passion and great commitment.
The people of Manyinga are right to reject teachers from other areas and whoever is calling them primitive is a fool and primitive himself. Recruitments start with National level, then Provinces and finally Districts, meaning that each Province and its Districts is given its slots which cumulates back to the National grand total. So it’s unacceptable for some teachers let’s say from Copperbelt, Luanshya to be posted to Manyinga when they also had their own position allocation there, that’s being selfish. Actually these stray teachers should have been rejected at the DEBS office before even reaching the people. Those teachers should be sent back to wherever they came from and whoever sent them should know where to take them but not Manyinga. The trained teachers in Manyinga also want employment.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be those teachers coming from other areas will eventually run away so it’s best to employ the locals.