As the country joins the world to mark and commemorate the International Teachers’ day, Democratic Party (DP) in opposition has reechoed the call to government to allocate a stimulus package to private schools and education institutions to push them afloat.
Addressing the media during the party’s weekly press briefing, the party’s Deputy Legal Adviser, Richard Lumu noted that this is the only gift that government can offer to teachers who are immensely affected by the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today being international teachers’ day, I believe the only gift you can give to teachers is to have their jobs protected, therefore, given that schools have been closed for a period of close to two years, some won’t be able to open especially those that were renting their premises whose landlords terminated the contracts with school proprietors for failure to pay rent,” Lumu said.
The opposition party leader said that these private schools have complemented the role and responsibility of government to provide education to its citizens especially in those areas where government has failed to set up schools.
“These schools have been helpful to Ugandans in various parts of the country therefore money should be earmarked to get them back on the road of offering education services,” Lumu said.
In the same spirit, Lumu noted that it is time for the government to establish Non-Performing Debt Trust under the Ministry of Finance for School proprietors that got loans,
“It was ill advise from Minister that the school owners should sell off their property to pay loans, let the government take over and pay the non-performing loans acquired by school proprietors who shall pay after the resumption of schools,” Lumu suggested.
During the early days of the lockdown in the year 2020, President Museveni directed for provision of a total of Shs20bn as bail out to teachers following complaints by the teachers in private schools over halting of their salaries and emoluments.
To date, the teachers are yet to receive the package despite setting up a number of SACCOs as they had earlier been told to.
The education sector is one of the sectors that have been greatly affected by the pandemic and not much as been done to come to the aid of the proprietors as well as the teachers.