DPP Urges Garissa Youths To Pursue Teaching Career
Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Noordin Haji has joined the list of people telling people in the North Eastern region to become teachers to fill the many jobs that need to be filled.
According to the DPP, who himself hails from Garissa, as long as the local populace shies away from the profession, the region will continue experiencing a teacher shortage.
Speaking in Garissa during the launch of Young Muslim Girls High School, Haji advised parents to urge their children to take up a career in teaching, saying the region’s progress was suffering from inadequate teachers.
“As I stand here today I want to encourage parents to try and encourage our children to take up this noble career after form four 4. We have a very big problem in this region as far as teachers are concerned and the solution lies with us,” Haji said.
“Unfortunately the majority of us here want to take up courses in procurement, nursing and many others because they think teaching is not a good course compared to others but to the contrary this is the best profession in the world,” he added.
The DPP gave a recent event where the leaders from Northeastern sat down with officials from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to discuss the teacher shortage plaguing the region but were taken aback after they were informed that if they were to be given special allowances, there were no current students who wanted to be teachers.
The issue of teacher shortages in the region has become a pain in the flesh of parents, students, leaders, and other education stakeholders, something that has ended up impacting results, especially in national tests.
The issue started in 2014 when al-Shabaab extremists started attacking non-local teachers, driving them to quit the region.
TSC was then compelled to withdraw the non-local teachers from the region and send them to other parts of the country.
The local authorities strongly denounced the move, stating that it glorified terrorists and deprived the children of their basic access to education.
The most prominent incidents are the bus attack in Mandera in 2014, where some 28 teachers were slain.
The Garissa university attack, where 48 students were killed, and the Kamuthe attack, where 6 instructors were killed.
The TSC says that Mandera needs 1,849 primary and 517 secondary school teachers to fill the teachers’ shortage gap.
In Wajir, the shortage in primary schools stands at 1,414 and 51 secondary teachers, whereas in Garissa county, the shortage is 913 in primary schools and 651 in secondary schools.
 Noordin Haji has joined the list of people telling){kind=link}