ZANU PF Scapegoating Teachers - Unions
Teachers’ unions have rejected claims by ZANU PF that they were being funded by “hostile” embassies to destabilise the country’s education system.
A report by the ZANU PF central committee submitted to the party’s 7th National People’s Congress held recently claimed that teachers were being paid by “hostile” embassies to continue with strikes.
However, unions representing teachers have hit back at ZANU PF, saying the ruling party was trying to find a scapegoat for its alleged failures.
Over the past few years, teachers and other civil servants have been pressing the government to restore the pre-October 2018 salary of US$540.
Speaking to NewsDay, Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) president Obert Masaraure said:
ZANU PF has no solutions to the education crisis and it is desperately trying to scapegoat unions for its failures.
At ARTUZ, we are seized with coming up with solutions to the education crisis. We recently published an alternative financing model for public education.
We hope the ruling party will engage with the document and we won’t be dragged into ZANU PF’s shadowboxing.
The country is desperate for leadership and the party should stop complaining about foreigners and start leading.
Educators Union of Zimbabwe president Tafadzwa Munodawafa said ZANU PF was misinformed. Said Munodawafa:
We do not know who misinforms ZANU PF as a party and we refuse to be drawn into politics.
We are not worried about who the ruling party of this country is. What we do, as unions, is to represent the issues that affect our members.
We are a professional body whose members simply want the employer to pay us a living wage and to stop inflicting labour rights abuses thereby setting the correct example to all employers in the industry in general.
My advice is that those responsible for information dissemination to all organisations, departments, or individuals on issues that concern educators have the responsibility of doing the proper thing as education is a sensitive nerve of any country.
It should be treated with utmost sincerity as we risk killing this profession for future generations.
The children we are teaching right now don’t desire to become teachers based on how the profession is being treated.
