Zimbabwe Teachers Can’t Afford to Report for Work
2009-01-29 12:21:05.828 GMT
By Brian Latham
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Thousands of Zimbabwean teachers are failing to return for the re-opening of the southern African nation’s schools this month because they can’t afford the commute to work, union leaders said.
Almost 80 percent of teachers haven’t reported for work in some schools, leaving tens of thousands of students without instructors, Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, said in a telephone interview today from Harare, the capital.
“Many teachers simply can’t afford to get to work,” said Sifiso Ndlovu, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Teachers’
Association. “The cost of commuting to work and back is more than they earn.”
Education in Zimbabwe, which the United Nations says is sub- Saharan Africa’s second-most literate nation after Seychelles, is collapsing like the country’s health, sewage and water systems.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been gripped by recession for the past decade that has caused shortages of food, fuel and other basic commodities. A cholera outbreak has killed at least 3,095 people since August and infected 58,993, the UN said today.
At least 6.9 million Zimbabweans, or more than half of the population, need emergency food rations, Richard Lee, a spokesman for the UN World Food Programme, said today in a telephone interview from Johannesburg, South Africa.
A political stalemate between President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from the U.K. in 1980, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai over a coalition government, has stymied any government action to deal with the crisis.
Inflation Soaring
Zimbabwe has world’s highest inflation rate, at 231 million percent last July, the last time the government provided an official estimate. With the value of the Zimbabwe dollar plunging to new records by the day, an average teacher’s salary can’t pay for a taxi ride from a township outside Harare to the city center.
“Only two of my 20 teachers have reported to work, and they live close enough to walk to the school,” Samuel Wakatama, the headmaster at an elementary school in Chitungwiza, a satellite town of a million people that adjoins Harare, said by phone yesterday. “Maybe they have left the country without telling us.
It is the same with all the schools here and in Harare.”
Zimbabwe’s Education Ministry didn’t answer calls made by Bloomberg News today. The government delayed the opening of schools by about three weeks this month because end-of-year examinations hadn’t been graded on time.
Taxi Charges
Teachers earn a basic salary of 26 trillion Zimbabwe dollars a month, Majongwe of the teachers’ union said. That’s the equivalent of about 26 U.S. cents using the black market exchange rate of 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars to $1. Zimbabwe’s dollar, the world’s worst performing currency, has plunged to about 37 million per U.S. dollar at the official exchange rate.
Shingi Sarudza, a taxi driver, said he charges $5 for a one- way trip from the township of Mabvuku to downtown Harare.
“We don’t accept Zimbabwe dollars because you can’t buy fuel in local money nowadays,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
The U.S. currency is often used for daily purchases, when it can be obtained. Businesses that trade in Zimbabwean dollars raise prices as many as four times a day.
While some schools have opened, they often have to send the pupils home because there is no-one to teach them, Majongwe said.
Teacher Numbers Decline
“Reports we are getting from all the country’s provinces show that there has been nothing going on at schools,” he said.
The number of teachers in Zimbabwe has declined by about half in the past decade to 75,000, the unions said. Most have fled to neighboring South Africa and Botswana, and the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler.
Joe Mutema, a social sciences graduate from the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, taught for three years before moving to the densely populated neighborhood of Hillbrow in Johannesburg.
As an illegal immigrant, he can’t find a formal job.
“I clean cars, distribute fliers, do anything I can now,”
Mutema said in a phone interview. “I am usually able to send a few rand to my family in Harare every month. Without me, they would starve.”
The South African government has estimated that about 3 million illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe have entered the country.
Miriam Mapurisa, a 17-year-old Zimbabwean living in the northern South African city of Polokwane, said conditions at her school in the Harare township of St Mary’s was one of the reasons she fled Zimbabwe with her parents.
As many as 15 students shared a textbook, and often teachers didn’t turn up for class, she said in a telephone interview.
“When I started school in Harare, teachers were so good and my older relatives went to university and many traveled to America and Europe and got high jobs,” she said. “That’s all finished now, the schools have been destroyed.” |
