President Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s government is in the process of handing each private primary or secondary school teacher Shs100,000 in Covid19 relief funds.
About 300,000 private teachers are registered with the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES).
It’s this database that the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MoGLSD) is expected to use to extend relief to teachers who missed out on government’s Covid19 relief last year when a total of 497,848 vulnerable poor Ugandans were each given Shs100,000.
MoGLSD, through its permanent secretary Aggrey Kibenge, has already informed all Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs), town clerks and the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) executive director of government’s plan to send each private teacher Shs100,000.
Private teachers missed out on the relief funds which went to vulnerable groups such as taxi drivers, market vendors, bodaboda riders and salon workers.
Now, government has secured funds from international charity GiveDirectly to extend relief to teachers in private schools most of which have not paid their staff for about two years the institutions have been closed.
Government has also ordered head teachers of private primary and secondary schools to upload data of eligible teachers via an online portal on the MoGLSD website, including attachments such as payroll data for one month of either January, February or March 2020 as evidence of salary payment, a signed payment roster, bank instruction/statement or mobile money statement.
In determining the beneficiaries, MoGLSD will look out for teachers who are not on government’s payroll, registered by MoES or had started on the process of registration with the education ministry.
These teachers must also have been working with a licensed private school before the first lockdown in March 2020.
Teachers who benefited from the previous government relief program of June 2021 will be removed from the list of beneficiaries.
As was the case with the June-September 2021 relief program, beneficiaries are expected to submit their mobile money numbers which must be registered in their names.