THE Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has come out guns blazing over government’s recent decision to stop paying Early Childhood Education (ECD) teachers’ salaries.
BY SILAS NKALA
PTUZ President Takavafira Zhou yesterday said his union was shocked by government’s dereliction of duty.
“It is nauseating that the new Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Paul Mavima, had the temerity to say parents have to either send their children to private schools or pay for teachers’ salaries,” Zhou said.
“PTUZ takes great exception to such a callous decision and monumental injustice, fundamentally the 1999 Nziramasanga Commission recommended a nine-year primary education, which schools have introduced with the integration of ECD A and ECD B in formal primary school education.”
“The law does not apply in retrospect and (Finance) minister (Patrick) Chinamasa, as a lawyer, and Mavima must be reminded that their enunciation cannot be applied on ECD teachers already in schools, unless if they want to create a legal lacuna,” he said.
“PTUZ, therefore, urges government to mellow to a more constructive approach permeable to reason, law and facts. We also call for teachers across unions’ divide as well as parents to engage a high gear and be ready to resist this educational vandalism by any means necessary at an opportune time.”
Parents in Bulawayo have since said Cabinet should not have approved the ECD programme in the first place if it did not plan to fund it.
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They said they would soon lobby for the scrapping of ECD classes until such a time when the government has secured funding for the teachers, indicating that government should not pass the buck to parents as they have no money.
