School and colleges were closed at the outbreak of the corona virus in March and are supposed to reopen this week, after six months. I remember missing a week or two of schooling and can only imagine what it would be like to lose six months. I share the anger and frustration of the students and the nation at large at the news schooling will NOT restart because of an outstanding issue - teachers’ wage dispute.
What is infuriating is that the teachers’ wage dispute was on the table before the March corona virus lockdown; government has had the last six months to resolve this matter. Government is only now offering teachers “a cushioning allowance in the week ending October 2”.
"There are fundamental errors in that statement," Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira Zhou said.
"Teachers have not requested for a cushion, they have requested for the restoration of their purchasing power to 2018 salaries pegged at US$550.
"This is what the teacher has presented to government. If government is now presenting another offer subject to what teachers have not requested, this is misfiring. What teachers want is that government must address their dispute of right.”
Some teachers are being paid as little as US$30 per month! There is no questioning that this is is not a living wage.
There is no denying that we must get the children back to school; they have lost six months of formal education already and, like everything in this life, they will never recover that lost time. Never!They cannot turn back the clock; none of us can. The last thing they wanted is to be losing even more schooling time!
The quality of education in Zimbabwe has suffered greatly because of decades of under funding; schools are in poor state of rot and decay and the teachers are poorly paid. In the last two decades, many schools and colleges, especially the government owned institutions, have barely managed to produce 5% pass rates.
We cannot provide adequate funding to our schools and colleges and pay the teachers a living wage as long as the country’s economy remains in a mess. 40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption under this Zanu PF dictatorship have led the country’s economy in ruins.
Our failure to revive the economy and with it our education system will only drag the nation even deeper into the economic abyss. What hope is there of reviving the economy with a poorly educated citizenry?
Whilst it is clear that Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies have no clue what to do to revive the country’s economy. Sadly, it is also crystal clear the party is determined to continue rigging the elections and, if need be use wanton violence, to retain the de facto one-party dictatorship that has ruled the nation these last 40 years.
Zimbabwe is stuck with a corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF dictatorship that has remained in power these 40 years because it rigged the elections. Stop the regime rigging elections, this is the soft underbelly of the beast, and you end the dictatorship.
During the 2008 to 2013 GNU, Zimbabwe had its best chance ever to implement the democratic reforms designed to take away Zanu PF’s carte blanche powers to rig elections. Sadly, Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders sold out and failed to get even one reform implemented. And to add insult to injury, MDC has since been participating in flawed and illegal elections giving the vote rigging Zanu PF some modicum of legitimacy.
To get another chance to implement the reforms; we must show that MDC and the rest in the opposition camp who continue to participate in these flawed elections no long represent the ordinary people. A tall order, given many MDC supporters are naive and gullible. They, even now with all the benefit of hindsight, still fail to understand what the 2008 GNU was about and hence fail to see how the MDC leaders sold-out.
Deny Zanu PF the modicum of legitimacy from the participation of credible opposition in the flawed elections and the party will be forced to once again accept the need for implementing reforms. It was the international community’s, including SADC and AU, refusal to accept Zanu PF’s legitimacy following the 2008 rigged elections that forced Mugabe to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement, agreeing to the need for democratic reforms.
Mnangagwa and company rigged the 2018 elections, the regime is illegitimate and must step down. The modicum of legitimacy Zanu PF is enjoys is derived from the opposition participation in the flawed and illegal elections. Nelson Chamisa and his MDC friends are corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs. They have lost political credibility.
Zimbabwe is facing a serious existential crisis and desperately needs to implement the democratic reforms to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance. It is intolerable that the nation should be held to ransom by a vote rigging ipso facto illegitimate regime, Zanu PF, plus its discredited political partner, MDC; who are blocking the reforms.
According to a communiqué issued by the Zimbabwe Unions Staff Association (ZUSA), the minister snubbed the association's representatives and only hand-picked one member whom he held a meeting with in his office.
ReplyDelete"He (the minister) preferred to summon one member to his office and indicated that the government was working on condition of service for university workers. He showed his interest in the issues brought to him," the communique reads.
"He reiterated that state university workers must exercise patience, trust, and collegiality or pack their bags," adds the communiqué signed by representatives of all the country's ten state universities.
However, the university lecturers said they were incapacitated to continue reporting for work.
"Regrettably, the minister has abandoned the agreed regional parity position. In light of the above developments, state universities' staff associations representatives as mandated by their members resolved that all state university employees are incapacitated to report for duty with immediate effect."
The university lecturers are demanding minimum monthly salaries of US$1 600.
This is just nonsense! If the employer does not pay the worker enough for the later to pay for his transport, food and other basic essentials the worker will not come to work. Government has taken full advantage of the country’s high unemployment rate to pay the workers slave wages but even here, there is a limit to what the workers can tolerate.
The truth is we are dealing with a regime that really does not care that the country’s education, health, economy, water supply, etc., etc. have all but collapse making life near impossible for the ordinary people. All the regime cares about is that it maintains its iron grip on power no matter what.
The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is the 40 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule. The party has managed to stay in power because it rigged the elections.
Zimbabweans have avoided addressing the problem of rigged elections but to get out of this mess this is the problem they must now deal with.
Addressing a post-Cabinet media briefing, Primary and Secondary Education minister Cain Matema said he was not sure why his charges were not reporting to work.
ReplyDelete"I am not quite sure formally what is it that the teachers' unions want except for what I have seen in the papers, looking at stories in the papers they talk of lack of PPE [personal protective equipment] and that they are incapacitated. I said early on, the government is providing PPE for all teachers right across the board so the issue of PPE as said by teachers doesn't seem to hold water at all," he said.
Mathema added: "On the other hand, government does understand the issue of teachers' salaries, that's why as government and teachers representatives, civil servants representatives we are in the middle of negotiations. In spite of that, government and the President directed that civil servants be given an allowance of USD$75, so that issue is being dealt with. We are saying government has already offered, not excluding teachers."
Teachers have written to government demanding a salary of US$520 or equivalent, saying their current salaries had reduced them to paupers.
Schools closed in March as part of the nationwide corona virus lockdown and the issue of teachers’ wages was on the agenda then. Why did government have this matter settled during the shut down? Students have already lost 6 months of schooling and it is infuriating that they are losing even more time over a matter that everyone knew was outstanding.
Government cannot pay teachers a living wage without first reviving the economy. The truth is this Zanu PF government has no clue what to do to revive the country’s comatose economy; it will not admit it and is forever negotiating, forever kicking the can down the road.
Well the teachers are human beings who have to eat, pay for their accommodation and transport, etc. here and now. These needs cannot delayed for one more day much less into the distant future. Pay the teachers a living wage or there will be no teachers to teach the children, it is that simple.
TEACHERS' unions have demanded to meet government in order to resolve the current impasse between the two parties.
ReplyDeleteThis comes as most teachers across the country boycotted the reopening of public schools on Monday, protesting against the failure by the government to test them for the lethal coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and poor remuneration.
"We have also long submitted our views on the prioritisation of the health and welfare of teachers and pupils and need not labour any further on that question of life and death. The government must ensure there is testing of pupils and teachers before schools can smoothly reopen," Zhou said.
Zanu PF cannot pay the teachers a living wage as long as the the country’s economy remains in its current comatose state and it will remain in this state as long as the regime remains in power because it has no clue how to revive the economy. The connection between living wage and good governance is undeniable and yet Zimbabweans have ignored it for the last 40 years and now the nation is paying dearly for it.
GOVERNMENT has pledged to release €55 000 to fix radiotherapy machines for cancer patients at Mpilo Central Hospital, as well as $56 million for the completion of the installation of lifts and renovations of high dependency unit and gas piping for Covid-19 patients.
ReplyDeleteThe machines at Mpilo's cancer unit for radiotherapy broke down in August due to overuse following the breakdown of machines at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals in Harare. Mpilo and Parirenyatwa hospitals are the only specialised centres for radiotherapy treatment in Zimbabwe.
Each machine costs US$1,5 million. Mpilo's cancer unit caters for people from across the country.
Ingutsheni Central Hospital, a mental health referral institution, was identified as the southern region's centralised mechanical workshop where all ambulances and other vehicles belonging to the Ministry of Health and Child Care would be serviced as part of decentralisation.
"We need to address the conditions of services for our health workers.
"When we are talking of conditions of service we are talking of accommodation, transport and staff cafeterias at workplaces."
VP Chiwenga said the Health ministry was being restructured with a new sustainable funding model for greater effectiveness, and a new work ethic for staff. He said in streamlining and expanding the operations of the ministry, the remuneration of health workers had been put at the core of the shake-up.
Yet another promise “to address the conditions of services of our health workers.” If some one had paid me one US cent (Z$ are worthless given the hyperinflation) every time a Zanu PF leaders made the promise, I would be a millionaire by now. Health workers are human beings and human beings cannot eat promises!
Many health workers have given up and left Zimbabwe for green pastures and those who could not leave for whatever reasons have found it near impossible to survive on the slave wages they are paid.
The tragedy for Zimbabwe is that the nation is stuck with leaders like VP Chiwenga, a buffoon who has no clue how to revive the country’s comatose economy but will not admit it. For the last 40 years now, Zanu PF has rigged elections to stay in power and the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption has taken its toll on the nation and economy.
Zimbabwe desperately needs to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections; our only hope of finally removing these Zanu PF buffoons from office.