By IFEOMA AKA

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

Mr James Akadu, the House Committee Chairman on Education, Science and Technology, made the call on Tuesday in Enugu when the committee visited the Post Primary School Management Board (PPSMB) as part of its oversight function.

Akadu said that the growing vacancies and inadequate teachers’ notices across many secondary schools in the state necessitated the call.

The Assemblyman said that the essence of the massive recruitment was because many teachers had retired from service while some were dead.

He noted that many secondary schools were lacking teachers in critical subjects.

According to him, the development has put more pressure on the remaining teachers, who are forced to work beyond their capacities.

Akadu, however, asked the board to advertise the vacancies during the recruitment exercise in order to employ qualified teachers.

He commended the Permanent Secretary in the board, Mrs Favour Ugwuanyi, for ensuring that the activities of the board were moving smoothly, even in the absence of constituted board members.

On the encroachment into school lands, a member of the committee, Mr Chinedu Nwamba, said the assembly would move a motion to demolish property located within school premises.

Nwamba, who frowned at the level of the encroachment, noted that they would use instrumentality of legislature to recover landed property of schools encroached upon in the state.

Mr Iloabuchi Aniagu, of Nkanu West constituency, urged the board to imbibe the maintenance culture to save the state government the financial burden of constructing new infrastructures.

Responding, Ugwuanyi informed the Assemblymen that the board had renovated 13 schools across the six educational zones in the state.

She, however, noted that PPSMB had accessed its 2021 recurrent budget but had yet to access the capital budget because there was no constituted board.

She said the development was affecting the effort of the Board to intervene in many secondary schools.

Ugwuanyi said that the state government had empowered some schools across the state on fire fighting to ensure that school buildings were properly protected from fire incidents.

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

She said the board had installed CCTV in some schools in the state adding that it had also embarked on regular supervision and monitoring of 294 secondary schools. (NAN)

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