The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Education and Sports has directed all private education institutions to duly pay their staff.
Teachers and other workers in some educational institutions have reportedly gone two months without receiving their due salaries while several institutions had resorted to paying them lesser percentages with others completely suspended.
School proprietors’ and administrators’ said they had no money to facilitate payrolls due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown. They explained that students who were their sole source of revenue went back home before clearing their outstanding balances.
However, Alex Kakooza, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education notes that since educational institutions have gone only two months without operating, the budgets for first term salaries should be adequate to pay the staff for at least three months.
Kakooza further reminded them about the Ministry of Education and Sports guidelines for staff employment in private schools and institutions which provides that school management shall pay the full-time staff during both school term and school holidays.
“This is, therefore to remind you that you are required to pay your employees during the lockdown period in accordance with the Employment Act and as per the agreed employment contracts,” stated Kakooza in a circular sent out to directors, proprietors and heads of educational institutions.
His statement comes days after private universities have filed for fiscal stimulus from the government to enable them to reopen their gates to finalists who are expected to return to their respective institutions next month.
Juma Mwamura, the General Secretary Uganda Private Teachers Union however fears that compelling private education institutions more so at the lower levels of secondary and primary to pay staff might not be easy given the fact that the private education sector is largely managed informally with a big number of teachers and instructors working without appointment letters.
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URN
Not Legal
Let the government instruct all registered private learning institution to issue appointment letters to their works
Truly government has always been silent on this issue of the private schools. They exploit teachers without payments, now is the time to make directives even when they have reasons strong enough to consider their staff unpayed?
Dies the gov’t have jobs for those in private schools? I like to see them paid but at thus point you must also understand that those schools operate hand in hand with parents paying fees .without fees payment where do you expect them to get money.
The gov’t doesn’t know these are helping it to provide jobs to many ugandans but it doesn’t give a hand.
Many villages you may find they have one gov’t school with less infrastructure to cater for numbers of children supposed to go to school.