Zimbabwean Teachers sing the Blues

Financial Gazette

By Tabitha Mutenga

24 September 2015

Teaching is one of those very noble professions that are, unfortunately, losing their prestige. Many of the country’s educators have gone for months without being paid their wages.

Those who have had their salaries withdrawn, were victims of a spirited government witch hunt to flush out ghost workers in the civil service. The ghost workers have principally been blamed for bleeding State coffers.

Earning a salary of US$350 per month, which is way below the country’s US$495 poverty datum line, teachers have always threatened to go on strike at the beginning of each term, hoping that their employer could become sympathetic to their plight and increase their wages.

But negotiations between government and teachers unions have failed to yield positive results.

To compound the teacher’s plight, government in April this year embarked on the civil service audit in an effort to establish the size of its workforce and weed out ghost workers. The audit has been criticised, by many, for targeting teachers and not the rest of the civil service.

An audit conducted in 2011 revealed that there were more than 75 000 ghost workers in the civil service. Interestingly, the current campaign would give an indication that all the ghost workers were from the teaching profession where reportedly hordes of ZANU-PF militia and supporters were strategically placed to draw a salary from government without raising suspicion.

However, instead of weeding out the real ghost workers, the head count, which most teachers described as a witch-hunt, saw genuine teachers being targeted and forcing them to go unpaid for the past three months after government froze their salaries arguing that the teachers were the ghost workers the government was looking for.

Most of those affected had been on leave of sanctioned absence when the audit took place.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) secretary-general, Raymond Majongwe, said government was unlikely to offer the struggling teachers anything after failing to commit itself to solving the myriad of challenges they faced.

“The head count has physically and mentally drained teachers, who feel intimidated by the whole process. Their employer has not been committed to solving the challenges currently bedevilling the profession yet they expect results from the system in which they have repeatedly failed to invest in,” Majongwe said.

“Shoddy planning by government has had a negative impact on innocent teachers who were on study leave, maternity leave, vacation and sick leave, after communicating with their superiors. The same employer approved these leave days, yet they froze their salaries.”

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) secretary-general, Raymond Majongwe

Majongwe also claimed that as one of the teacher’s representatives, the union was yet to see the audit report by the Public Service Commission (PSC).

“If there is nothing to hide why make the report a secret? This means these people have a hidden agenda. If this whole exercise had no clandestine motives why was the Minister of Education not engaged?” Majongwe questioned.

At the beginning of the third term, government launched a teacher-pupils ratio count at different schools as part of efforts to flush out more ghost teachers.

Teacher unions reported that some teachers had already lost their jobs through the new process.

“When government launched the (second) audit, the ghost workers disappeared. These dubious characters that would only surface on pay days were nowhere to be found. Government should come out clean and explain because it is responsible for placing these people in schools in the first place,” said Majongwe.

The exercise meant to help contain the huge wage bill gobbling more than 80 percent of the budget will not only affect the teachers but the whole education system.

Former Minister of Education, David Coltart, said while there was need for government to conduct the civil service audit, the manner in which it was conducted damaged the education sector.

“We need to understand that we have a shortage of qualified teachers, especially in certain disciplines such as maths and science. So any audit should not be looking at mere numbers but specific needs. As I understand it, if teachers were found not to be at their posts they were taken off the payroll, effectively fired, without any regard to their particular soil set. If that is correct, it is going to have deleterious consequences.

“There is a shortage of qualified teachers in Zimbabwe, especially in rural schools and particularly in remote areas like Binga where there are high numbers of unqualified teachers. No qualified teacher should be laid off in my view. They need to be identified and moved to areas where there are few qualified teachers,” Coltart said.

During his tenure as education minister, to ensure that there were enough qualified teachers in the country. Coltart initiated a US$26 million teacher re-training programme designed, in part, to help unqualified teachers become qualified.

“We need to identify our best unqualified teachers and ensure they are not fired but included in these training programmes,” Coltart advised.

Reports by teacher unions show that the audit and spot checks by the PSC were characterised by threats and harassment. In Bulawayo there were reports of auditors conducting a roll call during the school holidays and any teacher not present was deemed absent without official leave.

“We have been informed from Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central, Midlands, Matabeleland North, Harare and Manicaland that for the past few days teachers are holed at their station including those on legitimate authorised leave. Several school heads are reported to be tightening screws on their staff members. Reports are saying the same PSC officers are instructing heads to compile lists of all ‘troublesome’ teachers and hand them over to the district offices. Our own investigations have proved that some heads are using this opportunity to abuse their own teachers and get even with those who always stand up for their rights. The elderly heads are also being intimidated by the so-called ‘forced retirement’ while intimidating their staff as well,” said a report by PTUZ.

The audit is indicative of a desperate government, which is unable to meet its salary bill and so is acting in panic to reduce that bill.

“I question why teachers are being targeted. Although they constitute almost two thirds of the civil service that is an insufficient ground to want to fire them? Education should be our absolute priority; if we are to secure our future then we have no choice but to protect education and the most important element of any education sector is its body of teachers. I question why for example the military, CIO or police have not been targeted in a similar way. Most of our police seem to spend their days manning roadblocks surely it should be higher national priority to ensure that our children’s education is protected than manning roadblocks. Likewise there is no threat of war so why are we keeping the number of soldiers so high? How much money could be saved if we cut back in those areas?” Coltart asked.

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