By Sarah Gwetsani
The Teachers Council of Malawi (TCM) will from Monday 26th to Friday 30th May, 2025 conducts Compliance Inspections in schools located in the cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mzuzu and Zomba to ensure registration requirements and adherence to the established teaching standards.
The TCM says the inspections will focus on verification of teacher registration and licensing with the Teachers Council of Malawi, assessment of teacher qualifications, verification of the institutions registration into the teacher tracking system and compliance with payments for subscription fees for 2025-2026 financial year.
In a notice of compliance monitoring sent to all the Education Divisions across the country dated 21st May, 2025 signed by its Registrar Grace Mphandamkoko, the TCM has advised all school administrators, teachers and education authorities to cooperate fully with the inspection teams and ensure that all necessary documentation is available.
Mrs. Elizabeth Kaliza Banda of Area 51 in Lilongwe has described the Teachers Council of Malawi (TCM) as an institution which was established by the Government of Malawi to milk teachers that already are suffering from low salaries.
Kaliza Banda said TCM just the same as Teachers Union of Malawi(TUM) their interest is not to improve the welfare of teachers in Malawi but milking teachers from the small salaries they are getting for the officials’ personal enrichment.
She has claimed that almost all the Annual General Meetings (AGM) of TUM are held in the Lakeshore resort in Salima or Mangochi, their offices are closed on the day as all including watchmen and secretaries have taken all of their computers to the lake for work.
The woman, a teacher by professional said TCM and TUM are the richest institutions on the land because they target all teachers IN Malawi that have formed the largest percentage in the civil service and the office bearers are the ones benefiting not the teachers themselves.
She said all primary teachers in Malawi were paying K25,000, secondary teachers K45,000 for Teaching Licenses and this was extended to auxiliary and student teachers as well as Nursery school teachers, how much did the institution collected and what the money has done?
“If there was prudence use of money, TUM would have by today running a social corporate responsibility –a private school or a big business venture,” said Kaliza Banda.
She said she would have been happy if the Government of Malawi established an independent team of auditors to audit the Teachers Council of Malawi (TCM) in the spirit of transparency and accountability before embarking on a monitoring inspections to schools for compliance and payment of subscription fees for 2025-2026 financial year..
