Malawi govt. poverty: no allowances for College students for 6 months

Advertisement
Malawi teachers

Malawi24 can confidently reveal that following the tough economic times that the country is going through, the Malawi government has been forced to default paying allowances to students in Teachers Colleges for a period of six months.

Malawi teachers
Student teachers unpaid for six months in the field (Library)

Sources who spoke to Malawi24 on condition of anonymity confirmed that government has decided to lash out on students who are training to be teachers in the country’s Teacher Training Colleges.

“We have not been receiving our allowances for six months and it is very hard for us to survive in that situation, we do depend on that money so that we can meet our needs once we are sent for teaching practice in schools,” said a student from Blantyre Teachers College.

The student further called on government to speed up the process of disbursing the allowance arguing that the development is affecting their delivery of lessons and therefore impacting negatively on the education standards in the country.

Spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) Manfred Ndovi told Malawi24 that government is yet to pay the teachers.

Manfred Ndovi
Manfred Ndovi says the Education Ministry is sorting the problem out.

“It’s true that it’s six months now that they haven’t got anything as allowance, actually I can say the problem at hand is funding. Most teaching colleges get less and they focus on the administration part side-lining the student allowances.

“Right now most colleges have not got any money from the government to be used for this month though we are going towards the end of the (financial) year. We have now engaged the treasury and we hope that that they will be paid shortly,” said Ndovi in an interview with Malawi24.

Meanwhile Malawi government is also yet to pay newly recruited Primary school teachers due to financial hiccups in the country.

The development comes at a time when government announced that it will be increasing learning hours in Primary School so as to improve the quality of education in the country.