Zimpapers Logo

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart said while payment of incentives to teachers had a discriminatory effect between rural and urban educators, Government would not stop them until salaries were improved.

Minister Coltart was responding to a question from Mberengwa East House of Assembly Member Cde Makhosini Hlongwane (Zanu-PF) during a question and answer session.

Cde Hlongwane had asked what Government policy was on incentives as rural teachers were complaining that they were earning less than their counterparts in urban areas.

“This is a perennial problem and a perennial question and I need to say at the outset what is our policy regarding incentives.

“We do not like incentives and we would like to end incentives as soon as possible and we made it clear because we recognise that it discriminates,” said Minister Coltart.

“It discriminates between teachers teaching in poor areas in the rural or urban and teachers teaching in wealthy areas.

“So because of that there is tension within the teaching profession and, of course, it creates tension between parents and teachers as well.

“So the general policy is as soon as we can abolish incentives we will do so.”

Minister Coltart said it was important to note that over the past four years thousands of teachers had quit the profession and among those who left were teachers of English, Mathematics and Science, who were difficult to replace.

“It is very difficult to retrain teachers overnight for those subjects. We recognise that at present, because of the state of the economy, there is minimal inflow of money to Treasury.

“So it does not have sufficient money to pay teachers what they earn in the region.

“So we had to take this emergency interim measure and that measure has been to allow incentives to be paid to teachers so that at the very least we can retain some teachers,” he said.

“I do not, at the moment, seek to say this is a perfect system, in fact this is a far from perfect and what you say is absolutely correct there are some areas where teachers are hardly paid any incentives and there are areas where teachers are earning reasonable salaries.”

Minister Coltart was also asked to comment on a study by the United Nations Development Programme, which said Zimbabwe’s literacy rate had surged from 85 percent to 95 percent.

He said there was need to be cautious about the ranking since the method used, in his view, was flawed.

He said the UNDP had relied on attendance at school for the first four years of formal education as indicators of literacy rate.

“Attendance does not translate into literacy because pupils attend lessons with no textbooks and with temporary teachers,” said Minister Coltart.-Herald reporter