Work or you’re out: Zimbabwe threat to striking teachers

The Zimbabwe government says teachers and education officials who do not report for duty will be deemed to have resigned.

Teachers in the country have been on strike amid the start of a new school term demanding the government pay them in US dollars.

Teachers in Zimbabwe on average earn ZWL$21,000. The teachers’ union said their members could no longer afford the commute from their homes to the classroom. The government offered teachers a 20% pay increase and other incentives, such as free school fees for their children, but the teachers rejected the offer as insufficient.

In a statement, the Public Service Commission (PSC) said such behaviour by teachers to continue to absent themselves from work, with some reporting for duty but not working, “cannot be tolerated as it will have a lasting, negative impact on an entire generation”.

“The government notes with concern that, in spite of the significant steps it has taken to improve conditions of service, working with the Apex Council, some teachers continue to absent themselves from work, with some reporting for duty but not working. In this context government is taking the following measures:

“All teachers, deputy heads and heads of schools who do not report for duty by Tuesday February 22 will be deemed to have resigned from the service. Those reporting for duty but not teaching will also be deemed to have resigned. All those who will have in that manner so resigned and were occupying institutional accommodation are expected to vacate the same with immediate effect,” said the PSC.

The pay dispute between teachers and the government dates back to October 2018, when the government stopped paying teachers in US dollars. In a shocking development, last week the ministry of education suspended teachers for three months without pay for failing to report for duty — 135,000 teachers were suspended out of the roughly 140,000 employed in public schools.

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