Maravi

Kasama headteachers vow to crush Rupiah

Kasama headteachers vow to crush Rupiah
By Darious Kapembwa
Fri 13 May 2011, 10:30 CAT

SOME headteachers from various schools in Kasama have vowed to crush president Rupiah Banda and the MMD during this year’s tripartite elections. The headteachers talked to said they are angered by the behaviour of local government deputy minister Moses Muteteka and education minister Dora Siliya’s address to them.

Muteteka and Siliya last Saturday met the head- teachers at Kasama Girls High School where they instructed them to vote for President Banda and the MMD.

According to the head- teachers, Muteteka angered them when he disrespectfully rebuked them on why the MMD was fast losing popularity when they (headteachers) were supposed to be explaining various government programmes to people around the schools’ catchments.

“They came here telling us the usual rhetoric. Dora started first; she was saying she knows that all of us are politicians only that we have not come out in the open.

She asked us that, ‘why do you criticise government so much and yet you don’t praise the good thing that government is doing for you and the people when you are in schools that are receiving development?” one of the teachers said.

They said Siliya told them that Patriotic Front president Michael Sata was a bad person compared to President Banda.

“I think she got an idea of what they expect from us after elections because the whole mission here was to discredit Sata and PF and that is what unsettled all of us such that we murmured in disagreement, because she kept saying they government have a programme for us while Sata does not have.

But what programme is that which is only talked about when elections are near? So we want to try Sata because we have seen his party manifesto.

Otherwise their mission here is total failure because it is difficult to change a decided mind. We have suffered for too long and are resolved to teach them a lesson,” said another headteacher.

The school heads, however, said they became incensed by Muteteka who spoke like he was addressing ‘his children’.

They said they openly protested against Muteteka’s address until he apologised, sat down and called Siliya to address them.

“That young man, he started shouting at us like we are nothing, ‘eeh why are you not explaining? So we got angry until he said ‘sorry, maybe Honourable Siliya knows how to handle you since she works with you’,” said the headteacher.

When contacted, Muteteka failed to explain his encounter with the head-teachers and only said he and his two other colleagues Liato and Siliya were addressing workers according to their ministries.

“I don’t know what you mean. We are here the three of us myself, Honourable Liato and Honourable Siliya and we are working according to our ministries, so tomorrow I am going to Chinsali to address council workers,” said Muteteka.

Asked whether he addressed teachers at Kasama Girls High School, Muteteka hastily cut the line while Siliya was not reachable by press time.

Labels: DORA SILIYA, KASAMA, MANIFESTO, MMD, MOSES MUTETEKA, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 4:32 AM