ONGWEDIVA – Executive director of the ministry of education Sanet Steenkamp said N$18.3 billion received in the 2024/2025 financial budget will enable extra teachers to be recruited to ensure the adequate number of educators are employed.
“We have decided to give at least 200 more teachers for pre-primary across all regions. We have other vacant positions that must be filled this year,” she said.
Steenkamp revealed this yesterday in an interview with New Era, when said they are indeed excited about their budget and are fully aware that there has been a 9% increase in the budget from the previous year.
She also indicated that as from April, there will be a general increment of 5% for all the ministry’s staff.
“We have allocated N$680 million for salary increases,” she added.
Moreover, Steenkamp said they have allocated 723 teachers to schools that will also be covered by this budget.
“These teachers are already appointed in most of the schools and we are now getting the reports from the regions in terms of how many more teachers are still needed,” she further emphasised.
According to the executive director, out of this N$18.3 billion, N$14 billion is going towards salaries.
“We had a 37% increment of the development budget. In the previous year with the midterm budget review, we received N$706 million. We’ve now received N$970 million, of which N$100 million will go towards our implementation plan that we crafted as a result of the national conference on education and of course the remainder will go towards the construction of additional classrooms as well as renovation,” she stressed.
She added that they have also received an additional funding that will be transferred to the 14 regions to ensure that they make good in terms of decentralisation.
However, she mentioned this year, there will be an education grant increase.
“We will have N$300 per child (previously N$200) that is enrolled in primary school and then an education grant increase of N$400 (previously N$300) for secondary school learners. So we are very excited about it that there’s a great increase in that,” she added.
-fhamalwa@nepc.com.na