By IFEOMA AKA

The Enugu State House of Assembly has called for massive recruitment of secondary school teachers to enhance effective teaching and learning in the area.

The House Committee on Education, Science and Technology made the call on Thursday, when it visited the Post Primary School Management Board as part of its oversight function.

The committee’s Chairman, Mr James Akadu, said the call became necessary in view of the growing vacancies and inadequate teachers noticed in many secondary schools.

Akadu further said the recruitment would help to fill the vacancies created in the system by retirement and deaths.

He said that many schools lacked teachers in critical subjects, a development, he said, had put more pressure on the remaining teachers, who were forced to work beyond their capacities.

He, however, asked the board to advertise the vacancies during the recruitment in order to ensure that only qualified teachers were employed.

The lawmaker thanked the Permanent Secretary in the board, Mrs Favour Ugwuanyi, for administering the board smoothly, even in the absence of constituted board members.

A member of the committee, Mr Chinedu Nwamba, said the assembly would move a motion to check encroachment into public school premises.

Nwamba, who frowned at the level of encroachment, said the house would use its legislative powers to recover schools’ landed properties encroached upon.

Also, another member of the committee, Mr Iloabuchi Aniagu, urged the board to imbibe a maintenance culture to save the government the financial burden of constructing new infrastructures.

Responding, the board’s permanent secretary, told the lawmakers that the board had renovated 13 schools across the six educational zones.

She, however, said they had not accessed their 2021 recurrent and capital budget because of the absence of a constituted board.

According to her, the development is affecting the efforts of the board to intervene in many secondary schools.

Ugwuanyi said the state government had empowered 18 students in the state with fire-fighting equipment to enable them to protect school buildings from fire.

She said that most students in public schools in the state did not do well in the just concluded Joint Admission and Matriculation Board examination because they were not computer literate.

She, therefore, urged the state government to provide ICT facilities in public schools to enable the students to measure up with their counterparts in private schools.

Ugwuanyi further said the board had installed Close Circuit Television in some schools to enhance security.

She also said it had embarked on regular supervision and monitoring of the 294 secondary schools in the state to ensure efficient teaching and learning environment. (NAN)

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