Mzuzu-(MaraviPost)—Presidential Taskforce on Covid-19 has trashed the Teachers Union of Malawi’s (TUM) demands of receiving Covid-19 risk allowances, saying giving teachers the allowances will be going against the terms and conditions of the civil service.
Making the remarks in Parliament on Wednesday when she was presenting a ministerial statement on the reopening of schools, Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Agnes NyaLonje, stressed that government will make it a priority for all teachers to access vaccination against Covid-19 when its administration begins next month.
“What you must appreciate is what I said before. Issues of conditions of service for civil servants are issues that are under DHRMD. As such, the negotiations do not just involve Ministry of Education as a parent ministry for the teachers, but they also involve the wider government machinery because terms and conditions for civil servants are uder DHRMD which is under OPC and there are safe ways in which that is done.
“The assurance given to parents cannot be complete from me because the negotiation by nature it’s like we are negotiating; if I was to assure them, my assurance is that we are committed to making sure that we do everything possible to make sure that we resolve the issues between us and that schools come back to normal,” explained NyaLonje.
However, TUM’s President, Willie Malimba,
emphasised that teachers in public schools in the country will not put their guns down if government does not consider their demands.
Malimba further said his committee will hold an executive meeting on Thursday morning and the transpirations of the meeting will be communicated to the general public thereafter.
On Tuesday this week, President Lazarus Chakwera held an interface meeting with the Executive Committe for TUM and he directed that the Presidential Taskforce on Covid-19 should look into the teachers’ demands on Covid-19 risk allowances.
