Government vows to root out absentee, ineffective teachers in NW region

The Northwest Regional Delegate of Secondary Education, Ngwang Roland Yuven, is implementing a government decision to sanction absentee and ineffective teachers of government schools in the region.

In a recent document forwarded to Principals of state-owned secondary schools, Roland Yuven instructed them to forward lists of recalcitrant teachers latest February 10, 2023, for disciplinary measures to be meted out on them.

He also called on the principals to ensure committed teachers are well motivated and rewarded based on existing regulations.

The delegate’s communique notes that several teachers are not on duty, despite receiving monthly salaries, and many others who have resumed work are not effective.

“A significant number of teachers have so far refused to effectively resume duty, as confirmed by the lists submitted by school heads and duly forwarded to hierarchy (without genuine, justifiable and documented concerns),” the Regional Delegate stated.

He added that many other teachers have not resumed duty, nearly one month into the Second Term.

He chastised teachers who come to school but do not attend classes or have very poor lesson delivery methods, adding that some newly posted teachers connive with their immediate bosses to absent from school while pursuing other jobs elsewhere.

He said such behaviour provides “evidence of teachers’ complicity with negative social forces who keep militating against the return to normalcy in our schools…”

Like the Southwest region, Cameroon’s Northwest has been hard hit by the Anglophone Crisis, which has caused the shutdown of thousands of schools for nearly six years now.

More than 3,200 schools remained closed in both regions by the started of of last year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated in a report published March 10, 2022.

OCHA also noted that over 210,000 students have been displaced from school due to the crisis, with an estimated that 462,000 students in need of emergency education assistance.

Both government and people living in the two regions have been striving to reinstate education, as Separatist fighters continue to enforce a boycott of government schools.

Many teachers and students have been killed in the course of trying to do their job, while other teachers have abandoned their duties in search for greener pastures.

While struggling to ensure schools resume across the Northwest and Southwest Regions, the Government of Cameroon has also been bent on sanctioning teachers who have used the crisis as a pretext to receive free salaries while not teaching.

By Tata Mbunwe