THE demand for quality education in Zambia cannot be overemphasised especially in an era when the country is actively pursuing prospects of becoming a middle-income country by the year 2030.
In rural Zambia, however, many people remain illiterate as compared to urban areas because the number of teachers willing to ply their trade in the remote parts of the country is low.
This is because most of rural Zambia like in any other developing country still lacks adequate basic amenities such as schools, housing, hospitals, electricity, water and roads.
The current status quo has forced some teachers to shun working in rural areas because like any other human being, they too want to have the luxury of basic amenities at their fingertips.
It is sad that young people in rural Zambia are not enjoying the same benefits as their counter parts in urban areas when it comes to education, which is underscored as the key to success.
But the said teachers cannot be blamed for shunning remote areas because upon attainment of their qualifications through hard work, they expect only to settle in places where they have convenient access to the basic needs of life.
Actually, even the pupils themselves are faced with difficulties in accessing education as they too are forced to undergo through difficulties such as having to walk for kilometers to access the nearest school.
It is encouraging though that the stakeholders in the education sector, government inclusive are alive to this fact; hence emphasis has been placed on rural development categorically.
Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia (BETUZ) general secretary Geoffrey Simuntala expressed concern that the teachers were shunning working in the rural areas because those losing out were the future generations.
He told Beyond the News that; “the union has been fighting for its members to access rural remote hardship allowance so that they can access decent accommodation”.
However, there have been challenges in accessing these funds in light of poor road network and inadequate financial service providers to disburse the funding.
This is where Government now comes in with their role of providing infrastructure such as roads after which they can lobby financial institutions to establish base in the rural areas.
It is in this vein that this forum makes sense of projects such as the Link Zambia 8,000 and Pave Zambia 2000 projects that are aimed at making movement of people, goods and services will be made much easier.
The construction of bridges such as the Kazungula is also laudable because people will be able to access hard to reach places in shorter periods of time especially in the rural areas.
Government, however, needs to ensure that such projects are expeditiously executed because rural parts of the country have lagged behind development wise for a long time.
the target under millennium development goal number two of 2015 is to ensure that: children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
Zambia is making strides to achieve the feat but efforts can only be supplemented if teachers working in rural areas are already empowered even as development there takes centre-stage.
As modern schools are being built in rural areas, Community schools are also being elevated into higher primary institutions of learning and as such, there is need for more teachers.
Government needs to increase initiatives aimed at empowering teachers working from the rural areas and this process needs to be done expeditiously.
It was sad to see how a headmaster was transferred to work in a rural part of Western Province but his household property could not even fit the hut the family was allocated to occupy.
In its decentralisation programme, Government must ensure that the sections representing the ministry of Education at the Boma is manned by two or more officers.
This will allow for continuous inspection of what challenges teachers in rural areas are facing for quick action by the relevant officials.
In allocating facilities such as government vehicles, teachers in rural areas should also be considered as public modes of transport in far flung areas are usually not reliable.
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