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Government policy renders thousands unemployed
Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
May 30, 2011

Thousands of Zimbabwean students who completed their tertiary education courses or programs in the years 2009 and 2010 but who failed to fully pay the obviously education denying tuition fees have been barred from getting employment since the universities and colleges are withholding their results transcripts.

Between 2009 and 2011 more than 59% students who sat for their HEXCO examinations were and are still being denied their results transcripts. At the same time thousands more in different universities were denied their yester semester results a situation which candidly meant that the students could not continue with their studies, regrettably even at final year level. At Harare polytechnic college some full time classes were dissolved since no one had fully paid the fees. Those who had completed their programs were denied their results transcripts and rendered unemployable, notwithstanding the unmatched brain drain as well as the unemployment grid.

Zimbabwean state universities are charging at least US$375 per semester, whilst teachers and polytechnic colleges are charging a minimum of $US200 per term. For the teachers and polytechnic colleges this amount is exclusive of the HEXCO examination fees which is a minimum of US$120.In an environment where the majority of workers are earning paltry monthly salaries brutally below the poverty datum line which is currently pegged at US$500, yet the majority of workers are earning just below US$200, tertiary education has become a preserve for a select few elites.

The tuition fees crisis in Zimbabwe begun in 2006 when the then ZANU-PF government announced that it was withdrawing state assistance in response to impacts of decades of their own inability to run the economy. In the following years the government introduced the cadetship scheme as well as pegged the fees in restrictive amounts of American dollars. However, the cadetship scheme was immediately rejected by the majority of students because the scheme was amongst other things shrouded in secrecy and not all inclusive. Unfortunately the government decided not to listen to such reality calls from the students and culpably defended both the tuition fees regime and the dysfunctional cadetship scheme.

ZINASU bemoans such continued and sustained persecution of the poor sons and daughters of Zimbabwe. It is unfortunate that even during the colonial era nationalists including President Mugabe could attain degrees whilst in prisons, yet our own government denies the right to education to its guiltless poor. A number of ministers in particular those from the prime minister's party went to college curtsey of government grants, yet they artificially claim not to understand the fees crisis. And the prime minister's concern is with Zimbabwean students in South Africa at the behest of the Mugabe sponsorship where his only assessment tour endeared him to plastic and cosmetic sushi student concerns, but only a few miles from his residence are dilapidated institutions of learning bloated with suffering poor souls.

In their attempt to conceal this act of persecution, ZANU-PF has used the empty sanctions rhetoric and the MDC have in turn labeled ZANU-PF for being a stumbling block to progress. ZINASU believes the basic function of a government is to serve and protect its own people failure to do so render the system dysfunctional and irrelevant. ZINASU demands the right to protection of students from such colossal education denying policies such as the current tuition fees regime and calls for the implementation of the grant and loaning policy now.

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