Teaching Profession: Disturbing Desertion Records

The discovery of the number of personnel who have abandoned their duty posts follows the Minister’s press release No. 70/23/MINESEC /SG/DRH/SDP/SFCP of 30 May 2023 to call for the anonymous denunciation of personnel who are absent at their duty posts.  Minister Nalova Lyonga in the press release of October 23, 2023 in which the names of the concerned teachers are published, has invited the personnel who have abandoned their duty posts and are reported to be out of the country to report to the Ministry within two weeks. They have to bring along their job position mapping forms duly signed by their respective hierarchy and any other documents to justify their current administrative position. Disciplinary measures await the personal who will not honour the Minister’s summons.
The recent number of personal of the teaching profession of the secondary education sector is just a tip of the iceberg of what has been happening over the years. The rate at which civil servants and State agents abandon their duty posts for greener pastures abroad, especially those of the teaching profession, is alarmingly abominable. This directly contradicts with the do or die manoeuvres that usually characterise the recruitment operation into public schools. Almost everybody seeks to obtain a place in the public service. Once they are offered the opportunity, complaints set in and some of the personnel abandon their duty posts without tendering any resignation documents. Resignation is a right of any worker but those who continue to earn salaries after having abandoned their duty posts are fraudsters and corrupt people who sap the government of the difficult-to-find resources needed for general development.
The unacceptable phenomenon of abandonment of duty posts creates problems in the mapping of teaching personnel. After posting teachers to different parts of the country, officials at the various levels know that the needs of the learners will be taken care of with some fairness throughout the country. The abandonment of duty posts therefore negatively affects the students who may at times be found without their assigned teachers at the middle or some crucial periods of the school year. School authorities are more often embarrassed as a lot of gymnastics is required to fill the gaps of teachers who have deserted their duty posts. At the level of the central administration, there is the annoying problem of permanently reflecting on how to redeploy teachers in order to satisfy the growing needs throughout the country.
There is also an unacceptable fact that some of the teachers who abandon their duty posts do so with the complicity of school authorities. Cases have been uncovered over the years in which school principals take bribe from these unscrupulous teachers who abandoned their duty posts for greener pastures abroad but continuously earn undue salaries from the public treasury. During census of State personal, these persons rushed back to the country, furnished the required documents for the census after which they leave the country. Worrying are also cases where some people who have abandoned their duty posts hire people to teach for them against some financial benefits to both the person who has illegally replaced the public servant and the school authorities. Many of these hired people are not trained and their inclusion in the teaching system has also greatly contributed to the falling standards of education in the country. The run- away teachers do not only dupe government. Others take huge loans from local banks and financial institutions and vanish with the money.
The Minister of Secondary Education’s new measure to check the abandonment of duty posts in her sector is laudable i...