OPINION: Irresponsible teachers recording our children are a menace

By Ahmed Wetaka 

On Wednesday evening October 12, 2022, my workmate shared a very disturbing video of two minors accompanied by a petition from a concerned parent to the Uganda National Teacher’s Union-UNATU. In the video, female teachers instructed minors barely four to repeat an act of sexual misconduct they were found performing as the teachers recorded what was happening.

In addition to this, the teachers, some of whom were holding sticks and threatening the minors who looked every inch scared, what to do. I could hardly bring myself to complete watching the less than two minutes video because I felt enraged by the actions of the teachers first to compel the innocent children to repeat the act of secondly misconduct and secondly their audacity to record and later on share the video.

A lot of questions ran through my mind whether these were actually teachers and whether they had any sort of training.

I also asked myself whether they had thought clearly about the impact of their actions against these innocent souls. True, the minor erred but forcing them to repeat the action, recording it, and sharing it with the entire world to see is an abuse of trust the parents placed in teachers.

These minors will sure need counseling to overcome this trauma and later on how to deal with their innocent action. I personally think these teachers need to be called out and reprimanded for their actions. School proprietors also ought to recruit responsible people to run their schools.

It is not enough to erect buildings and hand them over to the first person who shows up to be in charge of young souls otherwise we risk killing entire generations.

Ahmed WetakaKampala