PTUZ president Takavafira Zhou in a statement said that the
number of resignations was expected to double by January 2021. Currently,
Zimbabwe has around 136 000 teachers and around 4,6 million learners.
Zhou said the mass exodus of teachers was due to
government’s failure to address their salary issues after they demanded to be
paid US$520 per month or the equivalent.
He said some of the teachers that resigned preferred to
work as artisanal miners, while others preferred to be vendors or to work in
neighbouring countries.
“Another driving force has been failure by government to
prioritise the health and safety of teachers. Several teachers have decided to
protect themselves and their families by leaving teaching. With the quantum
leap of COVID-19 cases among teachers and pupils, there is danger that the
resignation rate might exceed 20 000 by January 2021,” Zhou said.
“Worse still 99,9% of all remaining teachers have mentally
resigned from the profession although they physically remain at their stations.
This is a dangerous scenario for any profession and calls for urgent
intervention by government in order to stabilise the situation and guarantee
quality public education and skills revolution as envisaged in Agenda 2030,” he
said.
The PTUZ said teachers were unable to send their own
children to school and cannot trust the salary negotiations by government and
the Apex Council which they viewed as “treacherous”.
“Teachers have fallen from grace to grass because of
government’s failure to restore their salary’s purchasing power parity pegged
at US$520-US$550. The challenge in the education system also calls upon all
teachers across the teacher unions’ divide to bury their differences and fight
together as brothers and sisters for status restoration,” the PTUZ said.
Primary and Secondary education minister Cain Mathema
refuted the statistics by the PTUZ saying he does not have such information.
“I am hearing that for the first time. I don’t know where
he is getting his figures. I haven’t received such a report at the moment. I
don’t belong to his organisation anyway, so I am in the dark. Maybe he knows
better,” Mathema said. Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment