The Financial Gazette

Kudzai Bare, Staff Reporter

TEACHERS yesterday served the government of national unity (GNU) with a formal notice to strike within a fortnight as civil servants intensify their fight for better remuneration and improved working conditions.
As schools continued sending children back home over unpaid fees and levies, teachers’ unions were busy strategising for another crippling industrial action.
The Teachers Union of Zimba-bwe (TUZ), a pressure group representing mostly secondary school teachers, dispatched a notice to the Public Service Commission (PSC) yesterday, alerting them of the impending industrial action tentatively set to start on the 28th of this month.
In a letter addressed to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, Pretty Sunguro, and the PSC, TUZ said civil servants, especially teachers, have had enough of the coalition government’s empty promises.
“We herein notify the employer of our intention to embark on a nationwide industrial strike commencing on 28 September 2010 given that the employer has been given adequate time to pay teachers meaningful salaries, but to date has not moved an inch to improve the salaries,” reads part of the letter.
The underpaid workers, who presently take home an average of US$150 a month against a poverty datum line estimated at about US$500, have been piling pressure on the GNU to bankroll the next salary review from the proceeds of the sale of the Chiadzwa diamonds.
“Since 2008, teachers have been living on allowances, which are not pensionable and they are not able to send their own children to school when they are expected to teach others,” TUZ complained in their group complained in their letter, made available to this newspaper.
“The measures recommended by recent workshops including the Kariba (one) were just a time buyer and teachers feel cheated, betrayed, uncared for and enslaved to give free labour leaving their children with nothing.
“The establishment of task forces, which include the task force on resource mobilisation and cost drivers, were all but a hoax and a planned time buyer.”
The chief executive of TUZ, Manuel Nyawo, said they had also notified other unions representing government workers and are meeting tomorrow to map the way forward.

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