Sunday News
15 November 2009
Comment
Putting the interest of the people first is a key result area for any people’s representative.
The generality of the population has reposed on their leaders, especially those in Government, the power to make sound decisions that improve their welfare and are occasionally left wondering what would have gone wrong when their leaders come up with policies that further torment them and their children. Because of the economic hardships facing the nation caused by the illegal economic sanctions imposed on the country and the drought, many companies have been forced to close down while the few that are still running are operating below capacity.
Some workers have gone for months without pay, while some employers such as Government have not been able to review salaries and conditions of service for civil servants. Due to incapacity to pay, Government allowed teachers to get incentives from parents, many of whom are not working and for the few that are earning some wage, they are unable to pay school fees, levies, electricity bills, phone bills and rentals because the money is inadequate.
According to recent reports, more than 70 percent of students who should have registered for O and A-level examinations, failed to do so because their parents or guardians did not have money. This resulted in Government postponing the deadline for registration for public examinations.
Elsewhere in this paper we carry a sad story that schools including those run by Government and councils have unleashed debt collectors on poor parents to recover outstanding school fees and levies with threats that if these are not paid they would attach property including houses.
While we are not saying that parents should not pay school fees, it is strange that the authorities, who are themselves failing to paying teachers and other workers living salaries, expect parents to have money. We feel that there is lack of sincerity here because we are all operating in the same country hit by economic hardships. By agreeing that poor parents should pay teachers incentives, Government is admitting that it is failing to pay because of the economic challenges that are well documented and known. How and where parents should get the money they are not earning from their employers is a puzzle.
What is clear is that people are going to lose houses because many have since sold their television sets, radios and furniture items to pay power, phone, rent or medical bills and to buy food among other obligations. Failure by 70 percent of students to register for the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council examinations should have been a clear indicator that people have run out of everything. Taking the debt collector route is perfectly correct from a legal point of view as indicated by the Minister of education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart, himself a lawyer but the consequences are too ghastly to contemplate.
We cannot be a government that punishes people because they are poor. It is undisputed that past droughts and sanctions have been the major sources of our collective poverty and we cannot therefore, start feeding on each other as a solution to our cash-flow problems.
We demand that the people’s Government should therefore exercise caution before the situation gets out of hand. Yes, it will recover its money but thousands of people will be left homeless, without any utensils or furniture. This exercise, which the Government will be expected to deal with, will leave behind a trail of disaster.
Theoretically it has been argued that parents who cannot afford can apply for assistance through the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM) but who does not know that Government itself does not have money. Can it assist more than 70 percent of those children whose parents have not paid school and examinations fees.
This is a crisis that our nation needs to grapple with otherwise we will be moving from one difficult scenario to another. The people’s leaders should put people first.
We need to work together to address the fundamentals, that is the economic situation. If we stimulate economic activity there will be more jobs, and better capacity for everyone to pay for their basic requirements. Some people cannot raise a single dollar these days.
What is also disheartening about the debt collection exercise is that these same schools that are descending on parents did not teach children for almost half the year because of industrial actions over poor remuneration.