Teachers declare strike over pay ‘insult’

Meeting union leaders Wednesday … Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa

The development comes as government scrambled to re-arrange a meeting with civil service union leaders after the initial gathering earlier in the week was aborted.

Ministers Patrick Parirenyatwa, Prisca Mupfumira, David Parirenyatwa and central bank governor John Mangudya turned up for Monday’s meeting but union leaders refused to attend.

Zimbabwe’s largest teacher union told members on Tuesday the decision by the government to delay June salaries to July 7 “was rather strange and an insult to teachers”.

Teachers were expecting to be paid on Wednesday 22 June 2016.

“Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA) hereby notifies its members of a pending strike. It has come to the attention of the association that the employer is not intending to pay teachers their June 2016 salaries,” the union said in a statement.

“As such the association has resolved that all its members should down their tools as from 22 June if the employer does not change the pay date to a date in June.”

The union said it had lost patience with the government.

“Comrades let us all stop delivering service as from Wednesday 22 June 2016. Enough is enough. Please forward this message to every teacher you care about,” said ZIMTA.

The hard-pressed government announced last week that it was moving June pay dates for about half a million civil servants to July. Teachers were now set to get paid on July 7.

Officials said the meeting between ministers and union leaders had been re-arranged for Wednesday.

The head of unions representing civil servants Cecelia Alexander said they would only attend the meeting in order to tell government one thing.

“We will hear what they say before making our own interventions, but our stance is that we are not going to accept this move of making our salaries come mid-next month,” she said.

“We are also going to tell them that we will not be responsible for any action the workers will take if they fail to get their money this month.”