LAST year and also in 2008 it was reported that teachers’ colleges were failing to attract new trainees because school leavers were shunning the profession as unattractive. Even school leavers from relatively poor backgrounds could no longer be lured to train as teachers.
Over the past 10 years these youngsters have become accustomed to seeing almost destitute practising teachers.
Yet in the sixties, seventies and eighties teachers could afford to buy brand new cars, buy urban houses, send children to respectable boarding schools and put on trendy clothes. Not now. It’s even very difficult to easily identify a teacher in rural Zimbabwe these days.
There they are now notorious for owing heavy maize debts to villagers. They are not even worth lending a rand because they cannot repay it. There are no incentives there for them.
Their urban counterparts in high-density suburbs in the towns and cities are even worse off. A modest three roomed house in Chitungwiza demands US$90 from a take-home salary of US$140 and the poor chap is left with US$50 to cater for food, electricity, water bills, school fees, transport costs, medical expenses as well as clothes and sustenance for a family of six.
A cursory calculation will show that a housemaid earning US$30 a month is far much better than an urban teacher. At least she does not buy food, pay rent, water bills, buy soap or transport. I have seen house maids who are now more well-groomed than  some single-parent lady teachers. This is unacceptable. The majority of teachers are now degreed. Surely to pay them a measly US$140  is a great insult. I feel sorry for the likes of Raymond Majongwe, PTUZ secretary-general, who has been repeatedly arrested for trying to remind authorities of this growing concern.

Ordrix Mhiji
Chitungwiza.

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