By Fanny Kalonda
MWENYA Musenge says there has not been a radical change in the country that comes with a new party forming government.
Musenge, a former NDC leader, expressed concern with the high unemployment levels saying the government needs to improve the welfare of the people as poverty levels have escalated.
“If you look at what happened to Michael Chilufya Sata, when the PF came into government, within less than six months we are talking about …that rehabilitated nearly all the roads in Lusaka. The C400 that brought a number of roads to the Copperbelt, the Link Zambia 8,000 that opened up the country, and most of the provinces benefited. The linkage was there although it was abandoned immediately the president passed on. And that is where our colleagues, the immediate past president Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu lost it, because they lost direction and shifted away from the Michael Chilufya Sata. But above all things, what I would like to see is how we improve the welfare of the people generally,” he said. “Because poverty levels have escalated. The gap between the rich and poor has really grown and we are not seeing anything being done to improve the welfare of the people. The unemployment levels in the country keep on increasing and all we get are government leaders telling people that there would be creation of employment. That jobs will be created but we are not seeing anything. In short, we are saying that there hasn’t been a radical change which is supposed to be there when a new government, with a new party that comes into power. We talking about the 30,000 teachers we are yet to see. The 11,000 health workers we are yet to see them get employed though the activity has already begun. And again these figures that we are talking about are a drop in the ocean. The people who are not educated are not in those numbers. How is the government going to get such people? There are those that have already been thrown on the streets, how are they surviving at the moment? So for me, all I can see is the new dawn government hasn’t done much in terms of introducing radical changes as a new party in government.”
Musenge said the country was likely to produce dull children if there is no appropriate intervention with the free education policy.
He said the state of free education policy has created a lot of problems, as most classes are over packed further widening the teacher-pupil ratio.
Musenge said children are not getting anything in schools hence the need for urgent intervention.
He said the quality of education has been compromised by the number of pupils being attended to by one teacher.
“We anticipated that the education of our children or rather pupils in our country, the standard of education was not going to be compromised. But when you look at what has been happening lately, classes are over packed with pupils. So the new dawn government has to quickly fix this otherwise, this is such…to the nation to try and create an impression that they have given free education meanwhile we have compromised the level of education. So this has to be addressed as quickly as possible. Otherwise, we would be producing dull children in the next five years,” Musenge warned. “You will find in certain classes a teacher is handling not less than 120 pupils and the same teacher you find that he’s handling three classes per day. You find that such a teacher is attending to close to 360 pupils. How do you expect quality education to be imparted into the children? In short we are saying that, if we allowed such things to happen, in the next five years, the five years that the new dawn government will be in government, we would have produced, I can simply say, we would have produced uneducated children. In the next five years, if they do not change the system, as it is now, if as many children are getting in a schools… We all know that the pupil-teacher ratio is supposed to be 35 pupils to one teacher. The teacher being given 120 pupils what time…It’s literally nothing that the children are getting in school.”