Mozambique: Teachers oppose return to schools in insecure northern districts

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Mozambique: Teachers oppose return to schools in insecure northern districts

1:47 CAT | 13 Jul 2021

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

A group of primary school teachers in Macomia district, one of the districts affected by armed attacks in northern Mozambique, are contesting an order to return to school because they say there is no security there.

The teachers say that if they go to Macomia, they are exposed “as war shields”, reports Manuel Alberto, a teacher in that district, currently displaced in Pemba, the provincial capital.

“Last year the insurgents entered in the presence of the security Forces (FDS),” he says, recalling the occupation of the town in May 2020.

For the teacher, “it would be good if [the authorities] waited until the situation returns to normality to reopen” the schools, “even if it is only next year”, because those in Macomia “sleep in the bush”, Manuel Alberto said.

How can a teacher plan lessons in such conditions, living in fear of being beheaded?

At issue is a decision by the District Service for Education, Youth and Technology, based on a communiqué published in March, calling for the return of all primary school teachers to their schools, on the grounds that it is safe.

The reality is different, the teachers say.

“There is shooting,” says Isaura dos Santos, a teacher in Macomia for more than five years, now living in Pemba, but who continues to receive information about pockets of insecurity that have persisted in recent weeks.

“There are colleagues who are only there because they do not have money for transport”, she describes, noting that even “some of the neighbourhood leaders have fled”.

Cripton Dias, another teacher, fears the infiltration of “terrorists” into the schools, since now, due to the generalised stampede of the population, the students are unknown.

“They are not those students we knew” and “the teacher has doubts whether he is teaching the enemy or not,” he said.

For him, the request to return to an area under threat is intended to justify the allocation of funds to the education sector, without other services functioning.

Manuel Alberto says that teachers cannot be “the only public servants” returning to Macomia.

Armed groups have terrorised the province since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the ‘jihadist’ group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has led to more than 2,800 deaths according to the ACLED conflict registration project and 732,000 displaced people according to the UN.

Source: Lusa