By Editor
The current wave of early retirement of teachers in Rukungiri district has been attributed to the Rukungiri District Education Officer who has been described as a dictator.
This was discovered during our investigations to ascertain what has forced many teachers to abandon teaching at an early age.
According to the report, more than 100 teachers from Rukungiri district local government are pending to retire in December this year.
According to a retired female headteacher holding a Master’s Degree in Education whose identities have been withheld to avoid being victimized, the District Education Officer has been for years very hostile to female head teachers especially those who don’t open skirts for him.
She said that this has caused unnecessary transfers to punish these headteachers where she revealed to us how she was transferred 7 times in her 15 years of service which ended up forcing her to leave the profession. She also accused Mr. Jackson of being a witch which has kept him in this office.
Another serving headteacher who has been affected by the humiliation of the District Education Officer told us that since January 2023, he has been transferred to three schools without his consent. He told us that this forced him to reach the office of the Rukungiri district Chief Administrative officer who ordered the DEO Mr., Jackson Turyahumura to at least let him serve for years in the current school.
He said that after petitioning the Chief Administrative Officer, the District Education Officer was angry and he opted for revenge by restricting him headteacher, not to access school bank accounts to get money to run the school.
This took another intervention of the Chief Administrative Officer to change the system by allowing the school boards to access banks’ accounts without passing through the district education officer who was tasking them to first give him kickbacks before signing for them to withdraw the money.
The case is still the same for another serving headteacher who told us that the District Education Officer has haunted him for almost 20 years ever since they worked together at Katurika Primary School where Mr. Jackson was the school headteacher.
He said that Jackson is only known for his sectarian way of doing things and he is too selfish to the extent of harassing Headteachers who take a single step of development.
This source told us that even the fight between the District Education Officer and the District Inspector of Schools is because of the money he used to get from the schools, a deal that flopped due to his parallel relationship with the District Inspector of Schools Lydia Tushemerirwe.
He said that for the public interest and the benefit of the learners, the two should be retired if the education sector is to perform well.
In 2020, after the retirement of the then-district Education Officer Mr. Nzarirwehi Jackson, Turyahumura Jackson who was the then-district inspector of schools was promoted to the District Education Officer and by then he was running two offices of the district education officer and the district inspector of schools as he groomed Aidah Gumisiriza to take over the office of the inspector of schools office until Lydia Tushemerirwe was appointed the district inspector of schools by district service commission which left Mr. Jackson angered as he wanted Aidah to take this position though she had no credentials to run the position.
Another female teacher narrated to us how the District Education Officer Mr. Jackson tortured her to the extent of deleting her from the payroll when she was at Kyambogo University for an Upgrade even after securing a study leave. This took the intervention of the Rukungiri District Administrative Officer.
Parents who preferred anonymity told us that the office of the district education officer needs to be cleansed and find another person capable of running it for the benefit of the learners because the endless wars of the district education officer are affecting the education system.
They also called for the intervention of the inspectorate of government and the Anti-corruption since the Rukungiri district leaders have failed to resolve the matter.
