FORMER Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) students have petitioned President Robert Mugabe to order the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to employ graduates with a Diploma in Primary Education offered by the institution.
Feluna Nleya
This follows reports that the CSC has been turning down holders of the diploma programme, saying it was not a legitimate qualification.
The former students want Mugabe as Chancellor of all State universities to stamp his authority and order the CSC as the major employer to recognise the qualification as genuine.
Part of the petition, dated February 7 this year, reads: “The action by the CSC seems to undermine the Chancellor’s power of having conferred ZOU graduates with the Diploma in Education qualification.
Therefore, we seek your intervention with regard to this crisis. This whole scenario has resulted in former students suffering socially, economically and emotionally. They are suffering broken families and lives (sic).”
ZOU started offering the diploma programme in 2006 with the first group of students graduating in 2010.
“The first group was duly employed by the then Public Service Commission for the period covering eight months, from February 2010 to September 2010 when they got dismissed for lack of ‘proper qualifications’.
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“One year later, ZIMCHE (Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education) put up a notice in the print media suspending the ZOU Diploma in Education primary course until further notice.”
They said even after ZIMCHE had suspended the diploma, ZOU continued to offer the programme in 2011 where another group graduated with Mugabe presiding over the graduation ceremony.
“The ZOU Diploma in Education primary course has been stigmatised to such an extent that the Civil Service Commission has refused to employ anyone not even as a relief teacher in preference to people with non-teaching certificates,” the former students said.
“The whole situation with regard to the Diploma in Education is now seeming to take the form of some retribution from the government under which ZOU institution has trained over 100 graduates and yet they clearly do not want to offer them employment or regularise this qualification.”
