Teachers Unions and the Minister of Education are now at loggerheads over the scrapping of incentives for teachers in Zimbabwe. Back in the Zim dollar era when the economy took a nosedive and a massive exodus of qualified teachers was recorded, most parents were comfortable to chip in and help resolve the brain drain crisis in the teaching fraternity in Zimbabwe. This system of giving incentives was a noble idea meant to cushion teachers from the hyper-inflationary environment the country was facing during that time thus trying to avoid strikes, which would affect children’s learning.

Even though the government introduced a multi-currency system and inflation rate is now in single digits, parents continue to pay incentives to teachers because their salaries are still way below the poverty datum line. The issue of poor salaries is not only affecting teachers but also the rest of civil servants and even those in the private sector not to mention the self employed.  Some parents with school going children are even earning salaries, which are below those earned by teachers. Yet they still, while trying to make ends meet, continue to pay the incentives. The School Development Associations are at the forefront of forcing and ensuring that parents pay the incentives. It boils down to choosing to pay the incentives or risk having your child denied the right to education.

When the government recently announced that they want to do away with incentives there was an up-roar from the teachers union. Just like any other civil servants, teachers should be demanding better salaries from the government rather than continuing to squeeze money from parents from the little that they have. It’s now difficult to remove the incentives because if one compares the incentives to the salaries one would end up thinking that the incentives should be the salaries.

The teacher incentives have affected so many children because only those from well-up families can afford to access education, denying the same opportunity for children from poor families. Teachers’ representatives last week threatened industrial action if the Minister of Education went ahead with plans to scrap “teachers incentives”. The timing of the industrial action coincides with the writing of Grade Seven, Ordinary Level, and Advanced level end of year exams.

Education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights yet it’s now a privilege for the few and a bargaining tool for salary negotiations. It is high time the government and teachers stop criminalising the education system and stop this “incentive scam” which is simply extortion.

This entry was posted on September 27th, 2011 at 3:37 pm by Lenard Kamwendo and is filed under Economy, Governance, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.