Chronicle Editor
Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Reporter
ZIMBABWE Teachers’ Association (Zimta) members have said their acting secretary general Mr Goodwill Taderera lied when he said the association’s employees were employed under the civil servants’ working conditions.
In a statement, Zimta members said claims by Mr Taderera that chief executive officer Mr Sifiso Ndlovu could not be retired because he was a civil servant who had not reached retirement age were not true as he had resigned first before taking up the post of chief executive officer at the organisation.
Mr Ndlovu became Zimta’s chief executive officer in 2010.
Members also reiterated their calls for the national executive, led by Mr Richard Gundane to call an elective national congress which was last held in 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19.
Members have since written two petitions which have however been ignored by the national executive committee, the first one demanding accountability of various association scheme funds which allegedly disappeared under the present national executive. Mr Gundane was elected as Zimta president in April 2013, taking over from Mrs Tendai Chikowore, who had been in office for nine years.
Some of the scheme funds that were nationalised without members’ consent include the Bereavement Fund, while they have been attempts to take over the Matabeleland North headquarters building still under construction along Bulawayo-Victoria Falls road just after Amakhosi Filling Station.
There is also Hlekwini Vocational Training Centre just outside Bulawayo along Plumtree Road. The fight to stop the nationalisation of provincial scheme funds and properties has seen members filing papers with the courts and now await hearings.
They also claim that Mr Gundane and his executive committee members have been trying to extend Mr Ndlovu’s contract which ran out in May.
“We have noted with displeasure, the unacceptable responses and utterances by the acting secretary general, Mr Goodwill Taderera. His utterances clearly indicated and confirmed the unwillingness of the current national executive committee to listen to Zimta membership and we will not hesitate to act until we reclaim order, transparency and accountability in Zimta. We cannot afford and will never allow to lose our organisational benefits we are entitled to, to individuals who are greedy and think they have the capacity to own Zimta,” reads the statement.
They said Zimta was an independent labour organisation that is wholly and privately owned by subscribing members and was independent with its own constitution.
The members said the association has a serious leadership crisis which may need a legal solution to force the executive to call for an elective congress which will lead to sanity.
Zimta has a membership of more than 43 000 and is the largest teachers’ organisation in the country.
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