PARENTS have implored government to allow them to pay incentives to teachers to rescue the education system from collapse.
This came out on Friday during the 2023 pre-budget public hearings conducted by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance in Chivhu.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic period, teachers have been engaging in recurrent strikes and go-slows in protest over low salaries.
Salary negotiations between government and the teachers have on several occasions ended in deadlock after the employer refused to give in to the educators’ demands.
Chivhu residents said disgruntled teachers were not performing to full capacity due to low remuneration, resulting in them producing half-baked learners, hence the need to motivate them.
Collen Zvarevashe
“As it is, it appears the government is not taking serious consideration of the value of education for our children who are not learning in schools. The budgets should cater for the welfare of our teachers. Their salaries should be improved. Government should just admit that it has failed to cater for the welfare of the teacher and allow us to help it by paying incentives,” Zvarevashe said.
“Families in some poverty-stricken areas in Chikomba are not affording fees for basic education. This new curriculum cannot be funded to ensure that every parent can afford to educate their children, then it should be abandoned.”
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Monetary incentives to teachers were introduced in 2009 due to low salaries after the hyperinflationary crisis of 2008.
However, government criminalised the payment of incentives after it emerged that some schools were forcing parents to pay incentives.
