Covering up corruption at schools

The letter was an instruction ordering Tami and five of her colleagues at Sanyati to vacate the school within four weeks because it was overstaffed, and relocate to another school in Kadoma town, more than 100 km away. Being transferred from a school in a rural area to one in an urban area is an opportunity most teachers would, as the clich goes, grab with both hands.

However for Tami and her colleagues the suddenness of the move from a place they had called home for so many years, the struggle to find new accommodation in Kadoma and schools for their children turned what would have been a dream transfer into a nightmarish eviction whose legality they are now challenging with assistance from the Progressive Teachers Union for Zimbabwe (PTUZ).

Corrupt headmaster

But the case of Tami and her colleagues with allegedly corrupt headmasters using their powers to recommend teachers for transfer to cause such teachers to be virtually expelled from schools without proper procedures being followed and for the flimsiest of reasons.

For example the PTUZ told The Zimbabwean on Sunday that its Harare office alone has over the past six months handled more than 10 cases per month of arbitrary and unprocedural transfers. The militant union said the chief cause of the rise in the cases of arbitrary teacher transfers are some corrupt headmasters of abusing their right to recommend teacher transfers by punishing any teachers who attempt to expose corrupt activities.

The union said allowances paid by parents as an extra incentive for teachers were a chief cause of transfer disputes at schools. School authorities administer the allowances and many headmasters have been accused of abusing money raised through the allowances. Many of those accused of mismanaging or stealing the allowance money have responded by recommending to the ministry of education the removal from the schools of teachers seen as too outspoken over administration of the funds. It is those teachers who attempt to expose this corruption that face immediate transfers initiated by headmasters who want to keep the corrupt activities under the lid, said PTUZ national coordinator Oswald Madziva.

According to the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture regulations governing transfers, a teacher must be given 90 days notice before he/she is moved from one school to another. The government is also expected to meet the costs of transfer in cases like that of Tumi and her colleagues where the ministry initiates the transfer. But Madziva said teachers have in many cases been given as little as a month or less to leave a school for another.

Negative impact

The cash-strapped government has also not paid transfer costs, resulting in teachers having to either sell their property or fork out from their paltry salaries to cover the costs of moving to a new school they are posted to and leaving the PTUZ to fight to force the education ministry to live up to its obligations.

The Ministry has not been meeting any of the expenses of the relocating teachers and the issue speaks of the high levels of insecurity within the teaching fraternity as teachers are now living in fear of being abused by their superiors and being transferred at the end of it all said Madziva. You can imagine the teacher having to struggle to finance her transfer on their paltry salary. Relocating has a lot of implications, schoolchildren have to move and life has to take a completely new twist and this needs proper preparation, he added.

Madziva said the negative impact of an immediate transfer did not affect the individual teacher only, but also his/her classes. You can imagine a teacher being moved midterm, before finishing a syllabus with his/ her class, that obviously affects the flow of lessons, he said. Contacted for comment on the matter, Education Minister David Coltart said his ministry was not aware of such cases of forced or unprocedural transfer of teachers.

He said: We have not received any formal report but speaking of the transfers, they are done through the permanent secretarys office and it is of course subject to positions being available and general policy considerations.