DRC: Nearly one third of Congolese teachers work without pay
Despite significant gains among the teaching ranks over the past decade, a large portion of Congolese teachers are not getting paid, and in 2012, 2.5 million school age children were not in school.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has roughly 650,000 infant, primary and secondary school teachers, of whom 545,054 work in public establishments. But nearly a third of the teachers, 187,150 of them, are unpaid, said the Minister for Primary, Secondary and Vocational Education, Maker Mwangu Famba, at a 10 June plenary session address of the Senate in Kinshasa. The Minister made the statement during the debate of a bill concerning the specific status of staff in publicly run national education establishments.
Teaching standards falling
The Minister also acknowledged the sharp fall in the quality of education in the DRC, pointing to the economic crisis as the principal cause. However, in an effort to make improvements, the Government has earmarked a budget of 237 billion Congolese francs (about 200 million euros) for building, or renovating, a thousand schools across its vast national territory, within the framework of its programme titled “Education.”
The need for quality education
“We urge the national Congolese authorities to enter into pay negotiations with teachers without delay,” said the General Secretary of Education International, Fred van Leeuwen. “A country cannot possibly have quality teachers if it does not provide them with decent living and working conditions.”
He stressed that the public authorities, in the DRC as in the rest of the world, must guarantee equitable access to quality education.
