PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa will this Friday meet Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) leaders to hear their concerns.
The union has since applauded President Mnangagwa for affording them an opportunity to meet him.
Cde Mnangagwa’s Office advised the union through a letter to PTUZ secretary general Mr Ray Majongwe that he had agreed to meet them at State House in Harare. The union requested for a meeting with President Mnangangwa early this month.
“Thank you for your letter of 5 December 2018 requesting Progressive Teacher’s Union of Zimbabwe to meet His Excellency the President. Kindly be advised that His Excellency, the President has accepted to meet the Union at State House on Friday December 21 at 10AM,” reads the letter.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Majongwe said they were impressed by the President’s prompt response and were positive about the meeting.
“We wrote the first letter in July but we wrote another one just before schools closed on the 5th of December. We discovered that there were several issues so we went back and said we handed you a letter but we have these other issues from that letter we initially wrote,” he said.
“He has responded to us alone and we are more than happy, we would like to meet the President as PTUZ without being swallowed or drowned by other people with different agendas.
“So we are happy to meet the President as the PTUZ leadership, we are going to articulate our issues to the President and we hope our issues will be taken on board.”
Mr Majongwe said the meeting was meant to address teachers’ welfare issues.
“The issues that we are raising are the same ones, issues of our salary, issues of teacher-pupil ratio, infrastructure, issues of work load, condition of service and many others.
“We are going to meet the President to deliver the message from our members,” he said.
Mr Majongwe said they had in the past tried to meet former President Mugabe but failed.
“We have never met the President. We requested to meet President Mugabe a record 45 times and we were not given a single opportunity,” he said.
Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) chief executive officer Mr Sifiso Ndlovu said they were not aware of the meeting.
Teachers constitute the highest number of civil servants in the country and have for years bemoaned poor salaries and working conditions.
The education sector received the highest allocation of $1,5 billion in the 2019 National Budget with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education receiving the lion’s share of $1,132 billion and it is hoped that some of the teachers’ challenges will be addressed. Herald
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