14 September 2009
Zimonline
HARARE – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Monday availed US$70 million to Zimbabwe’s under-funded education sector that is currently reeling under a two-week-old strike by teachers across the country.
“The government of Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the international donor community today unveiled a US$70 million partnership through the Educational Transition Fund,” UNICEF said in a statement.
According to UNICEF, the funds would be used to acquire learning materials for pupils in the country’s public schools that have taken a heavy battering since the late 1990s, largely due to under-funding and neglect by the government.
“Recent assessment revealed serious shortages of learning materials, textbooks and supplies in schools. One assessment showed a pupil to text book ratio of 10 pupils per every textbook, across Zimbabwe,” UNICEF country representative Peter Salama said.
“The objective for the first year is to reach every child in Zimbabwe with a textbook within 12 months.â€
UNICEF assisted by the Ministry of Education, as well as other donor partners will administer the US$70m fund.
Education Minister David Coltart said the government must allocate more resources to the education sector and appealed to striking teachers to return to work.
“The education sector still faces numerous challenges, but the transition fund we launch today is a positive step towards the revival of the sector,” Coltart said.
“If we do not allocate meaningful resources in real terms to the education sector it will remain in a calamitous state. I deeply regret the ongoing strike by teachers and hope that an acceptable arrangement can be arrived at shortly to ensure teachers get back to classrooms.”
Teachers affiliated to the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (ZIMTA), the largest of two unions representing the country’s 90 000 teachers went on an indefinite nationwide strike beginning September 2 when the final school term of the year began, demanding that salaries and allowances be adjusted progressively towards the poverty datum line of US$502 by December 2009.
Currently teachers take home US$155 a month after government hiked salaries for all civil servants last month from the US$100 allowance they were getting since formation of the country’s coalition government in February.
The smaller Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ) did not support the strike call, urging teachers to report for duty to give the cash-strapped coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai time to raise resources to improve salaries and working conditions.
Zimbabwe’s education sector, once revered as one of the best in Africa, is a shadow of its former self because of a severe economic crisis over the past decade that has seen government fail to pay realistic salaries to teachers and provide learning materials such as chalks, textbooks and exercise books.
Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government between Tsvangirai and Mugabe has promised to revive the economy and restore basic services such as health and education that had virtually collapsed after years of recession.
But the failure by the unity government – which says it requires a total US$10 billion to get Zimbabwe on its feet again – to convince rich Western nations to release grants and soft loans has hampered its ability to drive the recovery effort.
Western governments insist they will not provide support until they see evidence Mugabe is committed to genuinely sharing power with Tsvangirai.