Government to recruit Kiswahili teachers into public service

The state minister of Gender, Peace Mutuuzo, has announced that all the trained and qualified Kiswahili teachers in Uganda will be absorbed into the public service.

This follows the cabinet approval of Kiswahili Council that will be charged with enforcing the teaching of the language in all the schools in the country.

Regionally Uganda is poorly ranged in Kiswahili speaking because of negativity attached to it as it was used by military forces during the country’s troubling times.

However Mutuuzu noted that the National Swahili Council will help to enforce teaching of the language as one of the ways to unite the people of Uganda since there are many indigenous languages in the country.

“It will enforce and note that the establishment of Swahili Council will not and is not intended to replace and substitute other local languages of national heritage but to harness benefits of greater and wider integration," she said.

She said Uganda does not lack Kiswahili teachers but there was no law to enforce it being taught in schools.

She noted that Uganda’s qualified Kiswahili teachers will be absorbed in government service.

“We shall employ all of them and the establishment of Kiswahili Council is going to open jobs for teachers who train in Kiswahili in Uganda to teach elsewhere Kiswahili in East African Community,"she said.

She noted that so far the language has been a barrier because there was no body that could standardise Kiswahili in Uganda.

So our people who train in Kiswahili would not go to any country in East Africa to teach Kiswahili,"she noted.

Since 1991, Kiswahili has been taught in few schools in Uganda.

With a new roadmap ,members of Kiswahili Council will be appointed soon after parliament passes the Kiswahili Bill which is due for tabling.