By Leopold Munhende
THREE days after lecturers gave the government a ten-day ultimatum to increase wages and improve their working conditions, Presidential Spokesperson George Charamba has revealed that an end to the ongoing protests could be in sight.
Lecturers announced a strike earlier this month over low wages of as little as US$230 and initiated demonstrations at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ), one of which got a number of them arrested, detained and fined.
Posting on X as Jamwanda, Charamba said President Emmerson Mnangagwa “had long approved” a proposal to deal with the UZ crisis and blamed unnamed officials for delays.
“You have been heard!!! Government is addressing the welfare of University Lecturers,” announced Charamba.
“It turns out the Chancellor, Dr E.D. Mnangagwa, had long approved recommendations which should have put this matter well behind us. Inertia gathered somewhere and the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) will cause movement.”
Charamba had shared on April 25 that lecturers’ grievances were “genuine.”
They are demanding US$2,250 salaries for junior lecturers as was the case before they were slashed in October 2018.
UZ’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) legal advisor Munyaradzi Gwisai last week announced the ten-day ultimatum and threatened to ensure lecturers across the country’s 14 state universities also withdrew their labour if grievances were not addressed.
Gwisai encouraged lecturers to suspend all their work, including the marking of examinations, until they were assured of a salary hike and improvement of their working conditions.
“We must ensure that not a single examination paper is marked from today onwards. We must ensure that not a single examination board sits from today onwards,” said Gwisai.
Lecturers, much like most civil servants, are getting some of the lowest wages in Zimbabwe, a fact that has driven some of them either out of higher and tertiary education or to other better-paying countries such as South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.
Their working conditions have been so bad, some of those working at the Midlands State University’s (MSU) Zvishavane Campus are reportedly sleeping on their office floors as they cannot afford to pay rent for both their families, most of whom are in Gweru, and then themselves.