Students of Government Bilingual High School (GBHS) Ako, in Ndonga-Mantung Division of the Northwest Region have staged a peaceful protest asking the government to provide them with teachers.
Reports say teachers who are sent to the said school do not come there at all or they come but are not regular in school.
Schools are struggling to bounce back in Ako Subdivision like many other localities in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon, which have suffered violence and school boycotts for nearly six years now.
Ako is an enclave Subdivision that borders the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Government teachers usually shy away from rural or semi rural areas like Ako and would rather prefer to be posted in urban areas, reports have said.
As such, when posted to places they don’t like, teachers negotiate with the school principals to cover them up while they find jobs elsewhere.
Cameroon’s Ministry of Secondary Education wants to uproot this phenomenon, especially in the Northwest Region, where thousands of school children are in dire need of education.
Recently, the delegate of Secondary education for the Northwest instructed school principals to submit names of ineffective and ghost teachers in their school so they can be disciplined by hierarchy.
The delegate noted that many teachers do not come to class to teach, despite being in school, while some abandoned their duties in search for greener pastures while continuing to receive salaries.
📷: CNA
©MMI
