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With the exception of the elite in the private sector, salaries and working conditions for most workers in the country are generally poor. The wages in both the private and public sector are like that because our economy is small and only recovering from the collapse of the past decade. Therefore, everyone out there is pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.
You have to live within your bare means; if not you wallow in debt. A few lucky ones run small businesses that give them extra cash — that is for the more responsible ones. Those who cannot live within their means but don’t want to borrow resort to crime, like demanding and accepting bribes as a few traffic police do, or some such unscrupulous means.
Teachers in the public sector want us to continue condoning a survival tactic that served them well during the hyper-inflationary era until recently.
The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education last week banned holiday and extra lectures saying they were being used to fleece parents. The ministry said ordinary lessons had not been disturbed so extra lessons were unnecessary now.
Teachers’ response to that ban, as we reported yesterday, was not only insolent but smacked of shameful greed as well. Zimbabwe Teachers Association (Zimta) and Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe declared their members would defy the order. The fact that they said they would defy the ban because extra lessons are an innovative way for them to get more money is, in fact, the overwhelming reason why the government must ban them. It is clear, from what Zimta and PTUZ representatives said in defence of the extra lessons, that their agenda is not pupils, but teachers’ personal welfare. Parents must be disturbed that they entrust the future of their children in people who regard them as a means to an end, not, as it must be, their core business.
By insisting that they want to continue with the extra lessons, teachers are unwittingly confirming that they are not teaching enough during the course of the term; that they are paid a full salary for half the job and therefore, must be given more time, and money over and above their regular government monthly salaries for them to teach adequately.
This is a serious and in our considered view, dismissible violation of their code of service. Government allowed the lessons to be conducted, at an extra cost to the parent to enable educators and pupils to overcome the disruptions caused by the collapse of the system between 2007 and 2009 not for ever.
“Anyone caught doing the opposite risks being dismissed from the service,” Minister Lazarus Dokora warned. “There is now little justification for one to apply for holiday lessons. The permanent secretary asked school headmasters if the 13 weeks were not adequate in order for government to increase the number of school days and all of them agreed that the days were adequate. This means that no one should conduct any extra holiday lesson because the school curriculum is designed to transact in those 13 weeks.”
We have noted in recent years that teachers tend to make the most noise about salaries and working conditions as if only they are poorly paid. We are expressing unhappiness at this pattern with due cognisance of teachers’ critical role in national development. Also, we are not defending their poor salaries but their demands must make sense.
Teachers at government schools earn $284 in basic salary and $100 and $116 transport and housing allowances respectively, bringing the total package to $500 monthly. The basic will rise to $375 this month when the government effects its commitment to improve civil servants’ salaries.
Teachers might want to know that not many professionals in the private sector are earning that much. In fact, the educators are some of the better paid formal workers in the country at this time. Save for a few exceptions, teachers’ accommodation is free and they live where they work so don’t pay rent or transport. A worker in industry has to pay accommodation and transport to go to work and back on the same salary or lower than a teacher’s.
They are also better off because they are guaranteed a salary every month, whereas hundreds of thousands of workers in the private sector, who make the money by the way, are paid as and when it is available. Yes, teachers are entitled to a better deal like everyone else but their salaries must not be above market.
We have raised the issue of teachers not covering as much ground as they must during the course of the term and pointed out how this showed a lethargic approach to work and that that must not be allowed.
It would be difficult for us to have them perform as they should if, at government level, the traditional monitoring and assessment programmes are not implemented. This is a matter that the government has to pay immediate attention to so that we accelerate the recovery we want to see in the education sector.
The incompetent excuse of failure to cover the syllabi would go and the basis for greed eliminated.
Online Reporter