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Shortage of law lecturers takes toll on UDSM
2006-10-26 09:10:14
By Ludger Kasumuni
Despite frequent advertisements for job vacancies at University of Dar es Salaam’s faculty of law, the department is yet to find 30 new lecturers it needs to cope with student intake.
Due to lack of enough lecturers, the faculty has been compelled to cancel all seminar programmes in the law courses, which are essential for training competent lawyers.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, the Dean of Faculty of Law, Prof. Sifuni Mchome, said that the faculty needs at least 75 lecturers, but it has only 45.
”We have acute shortage of lecturers. We have only 45 teaching staff but even then, the number is not good enough because only 22 are at senior level.
The rest are assistant lecturers and tutorial assistants who need more training,” Prof Mchome said.
He said whenever they advertise,they do not get applicants to fill the vacancies.
”We need more lecturers. The government has already permitted us to recruit more lecturers but we are yet to get them,” he said.
He said the ratio between a teaching staff and students was terrible - 100 students to one lecturer.
According to the laid down standards the ratio between teaching staff should be 15 to 20 students for one lecturer.
On his part, the Dean responsible for academics, Dr Khoti Kamanga said:
”We have been compelled to cancel all seminar programmes due to acute shortage of lecturers.
Since a seminar programme requires a lecture room to host between 15 and 20 students with one supervising lecturer, the faculty does not have lecturers for guiding students’ seminar discussions.”
Meanwhile, yesterday evening the academic community of UDSM commemorated the 45 years of UDSM and the faculty of law which was the first to be established in East Africa through affiliation with the University of London.
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