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Zimbabwe orders schools to slash fees
Reuters
May 04, 2009

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=84&art_id=vn20090504054744135C843870

Zimbabwe's government had ordered all state schools to slash their fees as it struggled with an economic crisis desperately crying out for massive foreign aid, the official Sunday Mail newspaper said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told a May Day rally that the new unity government he formed with his rival, Robert Mugabe, in February was broke and could not meet union demands for higher wages.

The paper said Education Minister David Coltart had recommended that state schools catering for a majority of Zimbabwean pupils cut their fees when they opened for a new term tomorrow, because many parents could not afford them. "I cannot divulge the figures at the moment because the recommendations are going to the (government) principals Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara today. However, what we want are substantial cuts," Coltart was quoted as saying.

The Sunday Mail said the minister was reducing the fees because Zimbabwe had so far failed to get the huge financial aid it needed to repair a shattered economy with a 90 percent jobless rate.

The Zimbabwean government set school fees in state schools at between $20 (almost R169) and $280 a term two months ago, but many parents have failed to pay, citing low wages and high living costs.

"When the (school) fees were set in March, the assumption was that we would get balance of payments support to kickstart the economy. But this has not materialised and parents are worse off than before," Coltart said.

On Friday, Tsvangirai said that the power-sharing administration that his MDC had formed with Mugabe's Zanu-PF party was bankrupt and unable to raise the monthly salary of $100 it was paying to the $454 being demanded as a minimum wage by unions.

Besides a crumbling infrastructure, mirrored in potholed roads and broken sewers, Zimbabwe's once-sound education system is wasting away amid the economic crisis.

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