Egypt: 40,000 teachers apply for jobs 24 hours after new portal launches

Egypt’s Ministry of Education on Wednesday launched the largest electronic portal for those seeking jobs at public and private schools.

“The ministry will hire 120,000 teachers on a contractual basis for a year. The contracts could then be renewed for three years and will cost the ministry EGP 1.6 billion [$0.1 billion],” state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported, quoting Education Minister Tarek Shawki.

Deputy Minister of Education, Mohamed Omar, said that within 24 hours of the portal’s launch, 40,000 applications were received for the variety of posts on offer including for teaching and administrative staff.

Omar added to Egyptian news site Masrawy that there is a great demand by applicants to register on the recruitment portal on the first day of application, adding that registration is ongoing and will not stop after a specific period as some have reported.

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He noted that registration is ongoing and that there are voluntary positions on offer.

The ministry has a staff shortage of up to 320,000.

Egypt recently sacked 1,070 teachers for allegedly being affiliated to a terror organisation.

Shawki said that the teachers were fired for their links to the Muslim Brotherhood and vowed to investigate teachers “unfit to work” to purge Egyptian schools of “destructive ideas” and “politically extreme views”.

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Egyptian authorities designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation in 2013 and since then any opponent of the government and other citizens are accused of belonging to or funding the group, even if they are not politically active.

A number of people have been arrested and accused of belonging to the Brotherhood even if they are from a party critical of the group. Ziad Al-Alimi, a former member of parliament for the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, was arrested as part of the Alliance of Hope case in June yet Al-Alimi was an outspoken critic of the organisation.