Workers’ unrest bigger threat to undermine Mr President
THE labour unrest in Zimbabwe’s education and health sectors has become so commonplace one would be excused to believe it is an annual ritual. Not a year passes without teachers and health staff withdrawing their services over poor salaries.
Every time this happens, the government provides temporary solutions, sometimes coercion, including dismissal threats, to get schools and hospitals running again.
Such momentary firefighting methods and intimidator tactics will not bring lasting solutions to the disquiet in these critical sectors and President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government is not doing itself a favour by perpetuating this problem.
ey need to sit down and restart the government remuneration formula in order to restore normalcy in these two sectors.
Teachers and nurses have for years been forced to accept poverty as a way of life, gradually robbed of the dignity and respect that their professions command.
is calls for an appreciation of the crucial role that the education and health sectors bring to the stability of the social, economic and political wellbeing of the country.
e government needs to change its stance and restore the dignity of our teachers. Abel Tendekai Muzorewa did that during his temporary romance with power in 1979.
Superintending over a restive civil service and abandoning provision of social services has been one of the biggest mistakes that the Zanu PF government has made.
Besides wreaking havoc on the lives of the people, a disabled social service provision encourages the emergence of, and nourishment of existing alternatives on Zimbabwe’s political landscape. So, the decision by government to allot civil service emoluments the bottom tier has not, after all, been in its favour.
e government will do itself a big favour therefore to understand that disinvestment in health and education provision is in itself a political own goal. Political survival, which Mnangagwa wants so desperately, really hinges on satisfying the masses’ needs for such social services as health and education.
Apparently these two sectors do not bring any money to the fiscus directly. But leaving the donor community and a few profit-driven individuals and companies to do whatever they feel like in the hapless communities is not the best thing for any government to do.
It is however clear Mnangagwa’s government, like that of his predecessor Robert Mugabe, will not be bothered by the need to pay realistic salaries to these critical sectors.
ey will not even seek to match staff levels with the nation’s health and education requirements because it will cause such a drain on the fiscus.
Only the powerful ministries of Defence and Home Affairs will always get what they want from the national cake — because of the warped belief that social services do not matter!