Teachers leader urges civil servants to go on hunger strike over wages

By Violet Gonda
28 April 2010

The militant Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has called for drastic measures, including going on hunger strike, to get the government’s attention over the plight of civil servants in the country.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti recently said salaries for civil servants had been frozen indefinitely because the government has no money. But the President of the PTUZ has rejected this claim and is calling civil servants to adopt new and more extreme protest strategies to ensure a favourable outcome. The group said there are a lot of resources in the country such as gold, diamonds and platinum which can be used to pay salaries for state workers.

PTUZ President Takavafira Zhou said: “As far as the PTUZ is concerned the best way forward for civil servants is for leadership to pursue the road designed last time in terms of hunger strike at the Public Service Commission and demonstrations to parliament, so that the issue of salaries is discussed in parliament. When the government freeze salary increments, the civil servants should prepare to liberate themselves out of this quagmire.”

Zhou urged civil servants not to just adopt strategies and tactics and then abandon them on the spur of a moment. He said the workers leadership in the civil service had agreed on a course of action to tackle their problems but those same people were now not ‘singing from the same hymn book,’ and have abandoned previously agreed forms of action. Zhou said some are afraid of arrest, and that other workers have been reduced to so much poverty and misery that they have ended up ‘salivating at poisonous carrots.’

He added: “The 'celebrated' unity of civil servants groups under the APEX Council has up to now failed to achieve much in terms of the improvement of the plight of civil servants. The employer has remained arrogant and intransigent, while political parties have prioritised sharing of political power rather than reconstruction of the education system, the health system and the provision of water and other services.”

“Equity in distribution of resources has remained a pipe dream while high profile corruption and patronage have remained permanent features even in the inclusive government.”

The union leader said the challenges call for more sophistication in the leadership of civil servants and said ‘mere grouping of associations without sharing a common ideology and frame of reference may not necessarily be strength.’

He said as workers prepare for Workers' Day on May 1st they must be reminded that they are their own liberators.

The desperate call for strategic planning for mass action comes at the same time as a shocking report from the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (ZIMTA) saying 45,000 teachers have left the profession over the last 10 years because of the economic and political crisis. ZIMTA said there is a critical shortage of teachers in state schools and the situation is being made worse by the current ‘demoralising’ salary structures. The teachers warned that the education sector will collapse if urgent action is not made to find a lasting solution to the ongoing crisis over salaries and working conditions.