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Harare – Hundreds of Zimbabwean teachers demanding better pay stayed at home on Monday, when schools reopened after six months of coronavirus restrictions.
At Warren Park High School, in a working-class western suburb of Harare, dozens of students waited in vain for their teachers in an unfinished school building.
Some wore face masks. A 20 liter bucket of hand sanitizer was placed at the entrance of the school.
In another public school in the upper-class district of Avondale, there were no teachers in sight and elementary school students played outside of classrooms.
The teachers “did not show up for their duties,” Raymond Majongwe, general secretary of one of the country’s largest unions, the Zimbabwe Progressive Teachers Union, told AFP.
Majongwe said that teachers are struggling to “survive” and cannot even afford to send their own children to school.
Teacher salaries, he said, have been heavily eroded by inflation, which surpasses 700%, to an equivalent average of $ 40 a month, down from $ 550 in October 2018.
He said:
Forty dollars is an insult. Teachers have lost their place in society. In fact, it is an insult to be a teacher. It is a curse.
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