RUNDU – Unemployed teachers are planning to stage a nationwide protest over their longstanding demands pertaining to their recruitment.

They have also threatened to close all Directorate of Education offices in the regions until their demands are met.

The protest is planned for 28 November countrywide, said National African Students’ Association’s secretary general in the Kavango West region Gellasius Kandunda.

“We want to eradicate the percentage of unemployed graduate teachers in the education sector,” he told Nampa on Sunday.

Kandunda said the decision to protest was taken last year by different former student leaders, who are unemployed.

“We have been engaging different education offices up to this year. We even went up to the extent of engaging with the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture directors in different regions. All these engagements did not give us the satisfactory responses that we were looking for,” he emphasised.

In the Kavango East region, the protest will start from the Rundu Sports Stadium, with a march to the Kavango East Education Directorate’s office. There, a petition will be handed over to the education director.

In the Kavango West region, the protest will run from the International University of Management in Nkurenkuru, and teachers will then march to the regional education office.

“After handing over our petition, we will ask the director to excuse himself from the office so that we can close it,” the student leader said.

In September this year, the unemployed teachers also held a media conference in Rundu, where they claimed that 80% of the understaffed schools in the country were in the two Kavango regions, where teachers have to cater for between 70 and 90 learners in a class. In total, 3 410 teachers are unemployed in the two regions.

However, this was challenged by the education ministry. - Nampa