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today’s meeting with Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart over the matter.

In separate interviews yesterday, the unions said incentives were no longer viable and had brought “mayhem” to the education sector.
Legal experts also argued the incentives were a form of extortion as most parents and guardians paid grudgingly to ensure their children were not victimised.

The unions said they have always been against incentives and the long-term solution was to increase teachers’ salaries and improve conditions of service.
Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe secretary-general Mr Raymond Majongwe said incentives can only continue if the Government introduces mechanisms to ensure all teachers, including those in rural areas, get them.

Mr Majongwe said teachers now lacked collective job action as a result of incentives which he described as “not pensionable.”
“They (incentives) must go. They are not pensionable, but they are serving the purposes of remuneration. If they are to stay, then Government should introduce an incentive budget that will see all teachers getting the same amount for incentives,” he said.

“As a union, we no longer want them because we have discovered that they are disastrous as they do not benefit all teachers. We now have different conditions for different teachers who have the same qualifications.”
Mr Majongwe added: “In the interest of real labour politics, some people who promised us money are using incentives as a divisive method to ensure there won’t be any collective job action.
“Parents are not Treasury and it is high time we face one problem, that is low remuneration.”

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Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association chief executive Mr Sifiso Ndlovu said incentives should be scrapped to bring back harmony in the education sector.
He said unless the incentives were declared legal, it would remain a “problematic issue.”
“Incentives have brought more harm than good in schools. An incentive should have a lifespan, but ours is just a continuous process, which is impacting on a lot of teachers, especially rural teachers. How can employees under one ministry get different incomes at the end of the day?” he asked.

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However, Mr Ndlovu said the removal of incentives should be done in a manner that did not “criminalise the education sector”.
“There is no doubt this is a tricky situation which needs a cautious approach for all our members to be happy at the end of the day. The onus is on Minister Coltart to find a workable plan,” he said.
Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe chief executive, Mr Manuel Nyawo, said if it was impossible for Government to scrap incentives, it should re-introduce rural allowances for teachers in the countryside.

“Minister Coltart has blundered but corrective measures can be taken. If he cannot scrap them, a rural allowance would make the teachers equal.
“We want a situation which is beneficial to all teachers countrywide, so he (Coltart) should be calculative enough,” he said.
Recently teachers unions were under fire from their members for allegedly abusing monthly subscriptions.
The teachers claimed that the US$8 and US$10 monthly subscriptions meant that the executive members were also surviving on incentives.

Minister Coltart was forced to call for a crisis meeting after the union leaders blamed him for crafting a policy that had brought “mayhem” to the education sector.
The minister, however, shifted the blame to his predecessors, arguing he inherited a policy that was already in existence when he came into office in 2009.

This comes as teachers in some parts of the country are striking against school authorities’ decision to slash the incentives.
Teachers in urban schools get between US$150 and US$400 depending on schools besides a net salary of over US$300 they receive from their employer.

However, some of their counterparts in rural areas do not get anything from poor parents.
The controversial incentives have also seen provincial education directors saying most qualified teachers were avoiding applying for higher positions in the education system as they were enjoying incentives at schools.