Independent Schools Association of Malawi – ISAMA has distanced itself from reports that it is mobilizing national wide protests to force authorities to reopen schools.

According to the widespread letter making rounds on social media, private school directors and leaners will go into the streets to express their grievances on how government is handling the closure of the schools due to Covid-19.

But reacting to the development, ISAMA President Joseph Patel said the association has no mandate of holding protests .

“As ISAMA, we don’t do demonstrations, so we would like to distance ourselves from that grouping possibly the school directors,” said Patel.

Patel added that ISAMA is still engaging Ministry of Education on a number of issues including that government should reconsider reopening schools as the online learning is not effective.

“During our meeting we agreed that government should reconsider reopening the schools, so we are waiting for the Ministry of Education to announce the date to the general republic on the date of reopening schools,” he said.

“The issue of online lessons not many students are taking because it needs a lot of resources so as ISAMA the only option we have is reopening the schools.”

As of Tuesday, Malawi had registered 101 confirmed Covid-19 positive cases with four deaths and 37 recoveries.