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The
Education Sector Crises
Civic Alliance
for Social and Economic Progress (CASEP)
October 21, 2002
The Civic Alliance
for Social and Economic Progress (CASEP) calls for a constructive
resolution of the real and urgent problems confronting the education
sector. Attacking the victims of the crisis - the teachers, lecturers,
students and communities around schools - does not resolve the problem.
CASEP holds
that the state has duty to ensure a basic level of quality education
services, where every child of school going age is enrolled in school
and where every person can access basic education financed from
taxes, without being charged fees that we cannot afford.
Attempts by
students to challenge huge increases in fee levels, by teachers
and lecturers to deal with massive losses in real incomes and by
communities to raise serious declines in education standards have
not been dealt with.
CASEP calls
for
- An urgent
review of the job status of teachers and lecturers to bring them
in line with other public servants, including in terms of wage
levels;
- Unconditional
and immediate reinstatement of any teachers dismissed due to collective
job action;
- The 2003
budget to clearly provide for a wage adjustment for teachers that
deals with their real loss in earnings relative to other civil
servants since 1995;
- The harmonized
labour law to be passed in this sitting of parliament to bring
public sector workers into an industrial relations system that
meets international labour standards, that prevents workers from
being victimized by the employer and that provides for basic rights
of collective job action;
- An end to
political harassment of and violence against teachers and students;
- An end to
arrests and harassment of elected representatives of student and
teacher organizations;
- School development
authorities, parents and communities to protect their schools
and teachers against arbitrary attack.
CASEP notes
that these issues have been raised by the teachers and student unions
for several years without resolution. The inability to resolve these
longstanding problems adds to new problems of loss of schooling
in farmworker children, inadequate schooling for children of resettled
communities, school drop out due to hunger in children and in the
growing orphan population.
The current
threatening and repressive response to problems in the sector does
not reflect the value Zimbabweans place on ensuring education, nor
does it deal with the real problems in the sector. CASEP
does not believe that the resolution of this situation lies in violence
from any quarter - it lies in inclusive dialogue to deal with the
issues underlying the source of conflict so that they can be resolved.
CASEP is a non-governmental
voluntary network of membership based civic organisations who aim
to collectively enhance social and economic progress in Zimbabwe.
For more information, please contact CASEP Tel/fax: 04- 705108,
708835
Visit the CASEP
fact sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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