- That the Public Service Commission should re-grade job posts in the teaching profession and civil service widely to reflect the reporting hierarchy and professional qualifications in order to restore the dignity and authority of the manager over subordinates. I will give an example of headmasters and school inspectors. This is a real massive problem. We have found that the reason why we do not have proper supervision is that you do not have a difference between somebody who becomes a school inspector and a headmaster. That is why no one likes to be a school inspector. You are better off being a headmaster sitting at your school with no other obligations because the grading system is not there. So, if we are going to get inspectors who will be on the ground to be able to supervise, there is need to remunerate them at a different level so that the hierarchy is seen and it is noticed.
I am also happy to report that the Minister of Public Service responded very positively to this particular issue including Minister Ncube. In fact, he said this was one of the initial things that he would start working on as they begin to look at the resources that they are putting into the teaching profession. We are happy that we will be able to see a difference in that respect.
- That the Government and the teachers union immediately engage in meaningful negotiations without the process being politicised. We really plead with both parties and in this instance, Government and teachers have a responsibility to ensure that the future of our children is in the right hands. We cannot continue to go years and years without getting to a point at which we can say this is the position that we now have. If we are going to do incremental things, let there be an agreement around that. I do not think that the attitude of weighing each other and thinking who is more powerful than the other works because it is at the detriment of our children.
- That teachers welfare should be prioritised and the platform for negotiation should be strengthened through amending appropriate legislation. The teachers union already has a draft of how they think you may create the subcommittee which is sector related and can feed into the broader negotiating forum. We were thinking if that happens, we may be able to move a bit faster than we have been doing around negotiations.
- That whilst negotiations between Government and the teachers union have centred on salaries, like I said before, I am now repeating, there is need to broaden the issues that are associated with some of these things. When we spoke to the unions, there were loads of issues, issues to do with curricula development and at the moment we are dealing with the CALA issue. I think if we engage on those issues which are not necessarily issues of remuneration, there may be softer issues in which we may find agreement.
We are going to be bringing to this House Mr. Speaker, the strategic interventions that are outside the issues of salaries and remunerations around the education sector. We thought that because this was a petition primarily to do with issues of remuneration, we owed it to both the teachers that had brought this petition and yourselves. Like I said, it is timely to bring this. So we really want to thank both the teachers’ unions and we want to thank Government – in particular the line ministries and the Ministers who gave us time, bilaterally to work on this and promised that they indeed would do something about it.
We also insisted that although the conditions of service sit within the Public Service Commission, we believe that a silo mentality may not address the issues. For example, the Minister of Housing needs to be brought on board so that we can deal with the issues of housing for teachers. All these sector ministers need to be set up. We always do that when we have a crisis. When we had COVID-19, we set up a Ministerial Committee to look at issues of COVID-19. I think that is what we need to do on issues to do with teachers. Let us create an inter-ministerial so that we also give a sense to our teachers that we are concerned, worried and want to make sure that their conditions of service are improved. I must thank you Mr. Speaker.
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