By EMMANUEL BANDA –
Education is said to be the key to development, and young people are said to be the future leaders of any country.
Many developed countries have succeeded in their economic plans because they have invested heavily in the education of their youth.
However, third world countries have remained impoverished and underdeveloped partly because of not investing in the education of their upcoming generation.
Their budgetary allocation in the education sector and youth empowerment more often than not receives little attention.
Countries like Zambia are still struggling to enter the middle-income bracket partly because of slow progression in economic development.
This slowness can be attributed to low education levels in citizens as a result of little investment in the education sector.
The result of this is high illiteracy levels, especially in rural and remote areas where communities are also less informed on many Government undertakings.
The importance of investing in education in Zambia has been recognised and highly prioritised by the New Dawn administration of the United Party for National Development (UPND).
This is envisaged in the higher amount of money allocated to the education sector, coupled with other incentives that are expected to ease and increase access to education.
Apart from the financial allocation to education, the incentives aimed at improving education among Zambian youths are unprecedented and, come January, next year, when the maiden New Deal National Budget starts working in the socio-economic development of the country, Zambia should see more children enrolled in schools.
It is in the public domain that more teachers (30,000) will be employed to curb the shortfall that compromises education standards due to the high teacher-pupil ratio.
The construction of more learning institutions to increase learning space is another motivation that is expected to improve education standards especially in rural areas.
Other than the Constituency development Fund (CDF), the State has also allocated funds to create hundreds of learning institutions at both primary and secondary level to increase classroom space.
This is aimed at reducing the chocking teacher-pupil ratio, thereby improving the quality of education.
The scrapping of tuition fees, Parents’ Teachers Association (PTA) fees, and allowing children without uniforms to attend classes, are some of the incentives that will not only favour the pupils but also parents and guardians.
President Hakainde Hichilema and his Government must have taken a lot of time to make this decision alongside the redesigning of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.
This combination, if religiously financed and implemented, is expected to see massive infrastructural development in the education sector in rural areas, with double funds directly flowing through the sectoral budget allocation and the CDF.
Considering that high illiteracy levels are synonymous with rural and remote communities where poverty levels are also rife, there should be no excuse for parents not to send their children to school.
Equally, there should be no reason for children to shun education.
It is common knowledge that parents and guardians in rural and per-urban areas blame lack of funds for their failure to send their children to school.
As a result, the majority of them tend not to send their children to school or withdraw them from learning institutions in preference to asking them to do other errands and forcing them into early marriages.
Meanwhile, children also take advantage of the lack of funds by their parents and guardians to engage in illicit activities, like alcohol and drug abuse, prostitution, and theft, among other vices.
A lot of young people of school-going age, especially boys, get drunk as early as 06:00 hours with others roaming streets aimlessly, begging for coins instead of going to school.
With girls, the situation is not better as they are forced into early marriages by their family members if they do not fall pregnant prematurely before they are betrothed.
It is also a common scenario to see young girls being involved in trading activities as early as 05:00 hours, selling vegetables and other foodstuffs which involve walking from house to house where they sell they make sells or deliver the vegetables to market places.
This is not right as children are supposed to be at school instead of being subjected to such activities.
Additionally, this is child labour and abuse of child rights.
Serious parents and children must take advantage of the free education policy in 2022 to enrol.
Chance comes once and children who dropped out of school for lack of funds, reams of paper, tools, uniforms and other requirements that were imposed by the PTAs and school managers, must report to their learning institutions and resume classes from where they stopped.
Parents should be encouraged to withdraw their children from the streets and drinking places and put them back into school so that they continue learning.
Zambia needs to develop and educated citizens are a prerequisite for education.
What is good about this education campaign is that the traditional leadership in Northern Province has also joined the campaign to encourage their subjects to take advantage of the free education policy.
Paramount Chief Chitimukulu has even offered to sponsor school pupils at Chimba Secondary School who will pass and go to study engineering and science at any institution of their choice from the first year of graduation.
“I am challenging you to take advantage of this free education policy and go to any university of your choice. I will sponsor you and provide other requirements up to graduation as long as you go to study science and engineering,” he said.
Senior Chief Mwamba of the Ituna Chiefdom is equally happy that Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) like World Vision Zambia, are working with the Government to offer education to children in rural areas.
“With the free education policy introduced by the government and the support of NGOs like World Vision, take your children to school. Stop marrying off your children and I will punish any parent that will disobey my directive,” Chief Mwamba said.
If children are the future leaders of the nation, it is, therefore, important that they are educated from childhood and encouraged to grow into responsible citizens to run the economy of the country as they take up the leadership mantle.
With the Government efforts and support from NGOs and the traditional leadership, education standards are likely to improve in the coming years.
This will see educated youths who will be responsible for running the country’s economy in future.-ZANIS.