4,500 TEACHER RECRUITMENT IS COMMENDABLE
March 20, 2025
The 2024 teacher recruitment released in the Zambia Daily Mail fulfills one of the many UPND campaign promises during its days in opposition.
As all Zambians may recall, the previous regime had imposed a deadly work freeze that continued to have negative effects on the broader Zambian spectrum, the teaching fraternity and the health sector being the worst hit.
What compounded this catastrophic decision was that the teacher-to-pupil ratio kept on broadening, rendering the provision of good, quality education impossible. The same could be said of the nurse/doctor to patient ratio gap kept spiraling out of control.
But the story changed immediately after the UPND to over public office. Shortly after being sworn in, President Hakainde Hichilema made sweeping changes that saw the lifting of the work/wage freeze. And in 2022, an historic 31,000 teachers were recruited.
As if that was not enough, in 2023, another recruitment exercise for teachers to a tune of 4,500 was done and was subsequently followed by the recruitment of 4,200 teachers for 2024.
With the increase in CDF-funded construction of classroom blocks across the country and an all-time high of more than 2 million pupils being enrolled into school since the re-introduction of free education by the UPND government, we can safely say Zambia is on its way towards the attainment of universal education as espoused in the Vision 2030.
Coupled with a motivated teaching workforce, with less congested classroom blocks and shorter distances to school for pupils, it can only be hoped that the recent recruitment of teachers and those to come later this year, indeed it is safe to say Zambia is on safe hands.
It is also hoped that the good people of Zambia will agree that the work freeze had rendered most graduates of teaching jobless, leading to desperation and a backlog of thousands of destitute.
And the continued recruitment of teachers that has seen a total of 39,000 teachers get to class, it is our shared view that Zambia will continue to shine on the education spectrum.
(C) THE FALCON
