Finance Stops Ministry of Education from Recruiting New Teachers

The Ministry of Education and Sports Permanent Secretary, Alex Kakooza has revealed that the Ministry won’t be in position to recruit more teachers as earlier planned due to lack of funds.

The PS was appearing before the Parliamentary Education Committee together with the Minister of Education, Janet Kataha Museveni to respond to queries raised by members over the different projects.

Last month, the Ministry committed to recruit 4000 teachers countrywide and offer grant aid to 100 schools and thus called upon the public to tender in application forms.

Kakooza, however, told Parliament that funds were never availed to that effect as earlier anticipated hence being advised by Finance to halt the exercise.

“We did not get money for grant aiding. We had placed adverts in the papers that we were going to recruit. We have been stopped by Finance.”

“We had said we are going to grant aid to 100 schools, we will most likely not because we didn’t get the money; we have now received a letter from Finance telling us not to move,” Kakooza observed.

The First Lady and Minister for Education Janet Kataha Museveni had earlier told the committee that they are engaged in negotiations with the ministry of finance to allow them apply for a supplementary budget worth Shs14bn to allow them to recruit teachers across the country.

“We have shortages of teachers and instructors, we have been looking into our budget to help us recruit more teachers but we haven’t been able to do that, we are discussing with the Finance Ministry hoping that we shall be able to present a supplementary and we need your support on that,” Kataha said.