Budgetary uncertainties may make it impossible to expand the school network in the central Mozambican province of Sofala next year.
Unless more money is allocated to education, then the Sofala education directorate will simply be unable to hire any more teachers, the provincial education director, Francisco Itai Meque, warned in a meeting of the provincial government, reported in Thursday's issue of the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique".
If that happens, he added, then the interests of some 90,000 school pupils will be damaged.
The education directorate wants to hire a further 1,850 teachers, in addition to the 5,786 it already employs. But it cannot start recruiting anybody without the certainty that there will be funds to pay them.
This year, Sofala education has already run into very serious difficulties. Some of the teachers hired this year went for months without wages - indeed, some became so disheartened that they abandoned their schools, and sought out other employment where they would at least receive a wage packet at the end of each month.
Meque complained that the provincial budgets are always cut by the central structures of the government, resulting in hardships for teachers who find that the provincial directorate does not have the money to pay them regularly.
So he threw down an ultimatum - no guaranteed money, no recruitment of new teachers. Which will mean that many Sofala children will find it impossible to enter, or continue, school next year.
Provincial governor Felicio Zacarias agreed. He lamented that the same problems happened every year, and were never solved. "So as not to create any more crises, let us hire no more teachers, until there is budgetary coverage for their wages", he said.
"We must explain to the central government that the money they send to the province is not enough to hire teachers, and so we will not risk recruiting any more", he declared.
If this was supposed to frighten the Finance Ministry, which holds the purse-strings, it did not work. The reaction of the provincial finance director, Orlando Chaves, was: "I'm pleased when the director of education says he won't hire any more teachers before there's a budget".
But nobody knows what next year's budget will be. Normally the state budget is not approved by parliament until mid-December - which gives the provinces very little time to organise the hiring of new teachers before the school year starts in February.
This year will be even worse - because of the general elections scheduled for 1-2 December, parliament will not hold its usual October-December sitting. Approval of the 2005 budget will thus be postponed until March at the earliest.
Fonte: AIM
