The leadership of the civil servants representative body, Apex Council, is set to change next Monday with the election of a new board to replace the Tendai Chikowore-led executive.
The elections, which were initially scheduled to be held on Wednesday, were postponed after some key council members failed to turn up.
The elections come at a time relations between the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association and the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) are reported to be strained.
Chikowore and Public Service Association president Cecilia Alexander’s terms of office expired this year.
“I understand the meeting will be held on Monday (next week) at 10 (am). The meeting had to be postponed because there are people who had commitments elsewhere.
“There is nothing sinister here. After all, the important thing is that people are in agreement all the way through,” said PTUZ secretary-general Raymond Majongwe.
Majongwe, who is believed to be eyeing the Apex Council presidency, described the body’s chairmanship as “a sticky issue”.
“The only sticky issue is that of the chairmanship. We need somebody who comes in with a new vision, a new way of doing things because things have changed and we need to engage and negotiate with government over salaries,” he said.
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However, Chikowore said she had a successful tenure and managed to unite feuding unions under one umbrella.
“What I managed to do during my term was to unite the unions so that we come together to talk and to chart the way forward,” said Chikowore.
“Previously we had a problem with new unions that were unable to join because the Apex Council was not opening up for new councils so I was actually saying look, we should work together. As unions from different backgrounds when we put our ideas together we can come up with a way forward. I tried to bring sanity to the Apex Council.”
