Recommendations.
- Government should call for an urgent meeting with Civil Service Workers Union to discuss the current negotiating framework, including its shortfall and explore the possibility of coming up with a framework that favours the majority of civil servants by 31st August, 2021.
The Committee on Primary and Secondary Education was fortunate to have gone into the region to benchmark and one of the things we looked at in the region was the legal negotiating frameworks for teachers in the region. We felt that in most countries, they do have a sectorial way of negotiating with teachers. We are not recommending a specific one because we think it is a basis for conversations. We also think we should open up this conversation to see whether there is a way, without necessarily overturning the entire negotiating framework for civil service but to try and find a way in which teachers in particular, find themselves onto the negotiating framework. One of the problems is, even though we have a negotiating framework, the teachers feel alienated from that negotiating framework. There could be a way of coming up with it and like I said, as both Committees, we do not have a proposal as yet but we did see from other countries that it resolved some of the problems that are associated with the majority of civil servants.
- The Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare should draft a Bill on the management of unions in order to rationalise activities of these bodies by December 2021. I must say that this recommendation actually came from the unions. When they did, we actually said we do not want to put this recommendation then because as unions they come back and say their democratic space has been taken away. They said one of the problems that you have is that vague way of registering unions. They did say in certain instances, you can have as many as 10 to 15 unions and it becomes problematic because at a school, each union has a right to come in. So at a school, the teachers can spend the whole day seeing one union after another and there may have to be a way of creating a proper criterion, for example; do you have a particular set of members in your union, constitution, et cetera that will limit the number of unions that you will have without necessarily going against their democratic right to form themselves.
- That the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and the Public Service Commission should create an informal communication framework with unions for purposes of continuously engaging on pertinent issues relating to the welfare of the Civil Service. We made this proposal to the Ministry of Public Service and to the Public Service Commission. One of our arguments was that it did not have to be formal but they could every two or three months, open up for conversations with the unions so that you do not meet at the time when there is a strike or when they are not coming to school. You will be generally talking about everything. I think there is also a sense that even things that happen within the teaching profession are not discussed because that process is not available. I must say we had bilateral conversations with the Public Service Commission, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance. So these recommendations we are giving you now are recommendations that were adopted and agreed to by the various organisations and institutions.
- That as part of conditions of teachers, the Public Service Commission in collaboration with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, should introduce a tuition fee waiver for up to three children attending public schools per teacher by October 2021. We are very excited about this particular issue because when we started having discussions with the Minister of Public Service, their initial response was to do it for everyone and not just teachers. I must however say by the time we went to meet Minister M. Ncube, it was one of the recommendations that he immediately liked and said he would try and factor it into the budget. As you know, those that work for ZESA get free electricity, those that are in the medical field when they are going to hospitals, they get a waiver. So, I think it is unfair for teachers to teach other children yet their own children will not be able to go to school. We feel this is something that is doable and I think it will show the political will and the sensitivity that Government is having around teachers.
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