Africa24

There are still many areas in Tonkolili that don’t have primary schools and paid up teachers.

School kids can walk between four to five miles from town to town and from village to village.

An example of a particular chiefdom in the north is Simbariya whose boundary shares between Masingbi in Tonkolili and Mange in Koinadugu District.

In our couple of visits at villages between Masingbi and Simbariya, several towns never have primary schools or teachers.

For example, children could be seen walking over long distances from Madina and Kursly villages to attend a primary school at Mange.

The few primary schools on the border between Tonkolili and Koinadugu districts are built by a renowned NGO.

These schools are assisted by the government after being built by the NGO.

Speaking to one of the teachers at Magborkoh village, he said they are having other serious constraints in the chiefdom.

One of their challenges, he said, is their non-approval by the government to be on its payroll.

“Only one teacher here is approved by the government; he is the only one collecting government salary.

Five of us are not receiving any salary from government but we are still teaching,” a teacher told our journalist at Magborkoh village in Tonkolili, which is 25 miles away from Masingbi town.

The teachers don’t have other facilities that their peers receive in headquartered towns like Simbariya, a popular town in Koinadugu, which is about 12 miles away from Magborkoh.

“We want a (TC) teaching certificate like our two colleagues who are currently taking TC distance classes in Makeni,” said the teacher.

The primary teacher at a government-run school said he wished he had the opportunity to do a distance education in Makeni like his colleagues.

If he gets a TC, he said, he is hopeful to be enlisted in government’s teaching payment system, otherwise the national teachers’ payroll.

“I only have attempted WASSCE once, the West African public exams. But I don’t have a sponsor and so I am here helping out the community,” he said.

To get an alternative income, the teachers are making their own farms where the pupils usually give them their help.

“It is out of this small farms we make we get our living but most parents don’t know this,” he complained.

“They hold up their children when asked to work for us. Also they don’t pay up the little contributions we ask in school. We only sum up courage because we don’t have anything else to do apart from teaching we have committed to doing,” said the teacher.

These teachers and many more in some of these remote communities in the rurals, if asked, would tell you their only hope is to get approval by government politicians who have regularly promised them approval during campaign times.

However, these promises by politicians are never being fulfilled.

And so the teachers have waited and waited for long but no government authority have ever come to their aid at Magborkoh, Mange, Mabala, Mapoli, etc.