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Zimbabwe schools order children to bring own food
Farisai Gonye and Nqobizitha Khumalo, Zim Online
January 16, 2008

http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=2559

Harare - Zimbabwean schools, hit by severe food shortages, are demanding that children bring along their own supplies, while a teachers' union said no learning will take place at most schools that opened for the new term yesterday because of a serious shortage of teachers.

The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) said some boarding schools - several of which cut short the last term after running out of food - may have to delay opening because they did not have food to feed students.

PTUZ secretary general Raymond Majongwe said nearly all the schools across the country would have to start the new term with less than adequate teachers after thousands of teachers left the country over the past five years to look for better paying jobs abroad.

He said poor salaries paid school-teachers have only helped worsen the situation with hundreds of teachers unable to travel to schools for the new term because they do not have money for bus fare despite the government last week advancing loans to teachers and all civil servants to ensure they were able to report for work.

"Our reports indicate that many schools will not open. These are clearly signs of the virtual collapse of (the) education (sector)," said Majongwe, whose union has warned teachers may go on strike to press for more pay and better working conditions.

Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere confirmed the difficulties that schools and teachers were facing but said all schools should open for the new term while the government looked into the myriad problems affecting the education sector.

"They are saying they have problems with budgets and food but we are saying they should open while the problems are being looked at," said Chigwedere, a former headmaster himself.

Neither the PTUZ nor the Ministry of Education were able to provide statistics of schools, if any, that were unable to begin lessons yesterday because of a shortage of teachers or boarding schools that had delayed beginning the new term, with the situation expected to be much clearer during the course of the week.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a debilitating political and economic crisis - blamed on repression and wrong policies by President Robert Mugabe - and seen in hyperinflation, a rapidly contracting GDP, the fastest for a country not at war according to the World Bank and shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel.

The public education sector has not been spared. Once the pride of Africa, Zimbabwe's schools have crumbled in step with the spectacular economic collapse.

School administrators have appealed to the government's National Incomes and Pricing Commission to be allowed to hike fees to raise cash to maintain schools, buy food and learning equipment for students.

The commission allowed schools to provisionally raise fees by 600 percent, which school authorities say is not enough given Zimbabwe's runaway inflation officially estimated at more than 8 000 percent as at end of last September but which some independent analysts say could be more than 24 000 percent.

This has left schools with no option but to ask children to bring their own food supplies or they would starve.

A snap survey by ZimOnline reporters in Matabeleland North and South provinces showed most schools were asking children to bring along groceries such as maize-meal, cooking oil, beans, salt, rice and sugar.

Most school heads would not answer questions on the matter, saying they were not authorised to speak to the press but parents confirmed to reporters that they were being asked to buy groceries for their children.

"The goods demanded at my child's school include 4kg packet of rice, 10kg bag of maize-meal, 2kg sugar, and 4kg of beans," said Thamsanqa Moyo, who has a child attending Empandeni secondary school near Plumtree in Matabeleland South province.

Moyo said the groceries were on top of the $24 million required as tuition fee for the term.

As parents battled to buy groceries for their kids, they also worried about school uniforms that are in short supply after a controversial government price freeze that it said was meant to bring down inflation resulted in shortages of commodities.

"I have not been able to buy the complete uniform for my boy, one because I can't get it from the uniforms supplier and two because I no longer have cash after all the other expenses," said a Bulawayo man who said his child attended Mpopoma high school in Zimbabwe's second largest city.

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