Teachers awarded 1 000 percent pay hike

Teachers awarded 1 000 percent pay hike

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By Fikile Mapala

THE Zimbabwe government has awarded teachers a massive 1 000 percent pay increase with immediate effect in a move aimed at averting a national strike planned by teachers for the beginning of the first school term.

A junior teacher will now earn a basic salary of $150 million with effect from January 1, with an additional $78 million in transport allowance and $30 million in housing allowances.

The new pay rise translates to a gross salary of $260 million per month up from a paltry monthly basic salary of $15 million and a transport allowance of $7 million as well as $3 million housing allowance last year.

A senior teacher will now gross $330 million while housing and transport allowances of all teachers will not be taxed.

Sources say a junior teacher has been moved one grade upwards, from grade C4 to grade D1, which is now the entry point for a newly qualified teacher.

Tendai Chokowore, the President of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association, confirmed the new pay offer for the teachers.

Chikowore is also the chairperson of APEX -- a coalition of civil service workers organisations -- which represents teachers and other civil servants in salary negotiations with the Public Service Commission.

Salary negotiations for all civil servants usually take place within a statutory body known as the Joint Negotiating Council.

Teachers were headed for a showdown with government over a demand for a 1000 percent salary increment with effect from this month.

In a letter to the Public Service Commission dated November 30, Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) secretary general Raymond Majongwe had warned that industrial action was unavoidable if the teachers’ demands were not met.

The militant teachers union had demanded a basic salary of $150 million, a transport allowance of $88 million and a housing allowance of $80 million for the lowest paid teacher.

“We advise you to take these concerns seriously in order to avoid a showdown with teachers when schools open for the first term in 2008,” the teachers union had warned at the time.

Teachers are set to receive half of their salaries this week with the other half payable on pay-day on January 22.

The government this month resolved to give advance salaries to all civil servants in a move calculated to pacify an agitated workforce after hundreds of workers had stopped reporting for duty citing lack of transport funds.

Nurses and the uniformed forces have already received the salary advances from government last Friday.

The PTUZ estimates that 25 000 teachers have left the country since the beginning of this year while others have opted for the informal sector.

Nurses, doctors and other professionals are leaving Zimbabwe in droves in search of better paying jobs in Botswana, South Africa, Britain, Australia and the United States.

The southern African country is grappling with acute shortages of basic foodstuffs, fuel, foreign currency and a galloping inflation after seven years of economic recession which many blame on 83-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s misrule.

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