The government has refused to renew contracts for 24 retired school headmasters and senior teachers it had rehired to fill vacant positions in Harare and Bulawayo metropolitan provinces following the brain drain that hit the education sector a few years ago.
REPORT BY KUPAKWASHE MAKONYE OWN CORRESPONDENT
The Public Service Commission (PSC) wrote to Secretary for Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Constance Chigwamba last month advising that their contracts should not be renewed as they had reached retirement age.
The PSC acting secretary, only referred to as N S Moyo, in his letter to Chigwamba dated December 7, 2012, said the two provinces had adequate manpower from the labour market.
“Reference is made to your minute dated 21 September 2012 wherein you are requesting for the Commission’s approval to renew employment contracts for various members.
“It is, however, noted that the members have reached retirement age and the two provinces have adequate manpower from the labour market and long waiting list to fill the posts.
“In this view, please be advised that the request to renew the below listed members’ employment contracts for the next financial year is turned down,” Moyo said.
However, the affected headmasters said the decision had come as a shock to them since they were not informed of the developments.
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“The government made an arrangement to extend services of retired persons on contracts to those who had retired from work during the dollarisation era, these contracts were to be renewed annually,” said one of the former headmasters.
“We made applications to renew our contracts in September last year, but we did not receive the ministry’s position until this year when we were told our contracts had been terminated and we were not going to be accepted in our schools.”
He said government had denied them the opportunity to make an official hand-over-take-over process, saying this had affected schools in Harare and Bulawayo mainly.
“Some schools are opening tomorrow (today) without school heads as we were denied the opportunity to do the handover and takeover process.
“To our knowledge, no one has been sent to those schools,” said another senior teacher.
