News / Education
Rural teachers get hardship allowance
24 Jun 2014 at 06:29hrs | Views
THE government has re-introduced a hardship allowance for rural teachers calculated at five percent of their gross monthly salaries.
The move is likely to create some imbalances between rural teachers and their urban counterparts who recently had incentives they were getting from parents and guardians scrapped.
Rural teachers previously received a rural allowance, but the government stopped paying them in 2009 when it formalised the multi-currency system and every civil servant was paid a uniform $100.
Teachers' unions yesterday confirmed that the government had started paying them a rural hardship allowance with most of them getting between $15 and $25 monthly, depending on their grade.
This is way below the 15 percent of basic salary civil servants were demanding in their position paper handed to the government in December last year.
Richard Gundane, the Zimbabwe Teachers Association president and Apex Council team leader, said while the percentage of the allowance was below their expectations, at least the government was recognising the rural worker.
He said the scrapping of the rural allowance had seen most civil servants shunning remote areas.
"Rural teachers have been getting this for the past three months and this mere gesture of putting that five percent is an indication that rural teachers are recognised," he said.
"What is now needed is for the government to continue working on the percentage such that it becomes significant because those in remote areas have to be cushioned from the hard conditions peculiar with those areas."
Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe secretary general, Rayond Majongwe, said: "There is need to define who qualifies for a rural allowance because those in peri-urban areas also consider themselves as in rural areas.
"These are some of the issues that we're going to discuss when we meet on the 27th of this month."
The move is likely to create some imbalances between rural teachers and their urban counterparts who recently had incentives they were getting from parents and guardians scrapped.
Rural teachers previously received a rural allowance, but the government stopped paying them in 2009 when it formalised the multi-currency system and every civil servant was paid a uniform $100.
Teachers' unions yesterday confirmed that the government had started paying them a rural hardship allowance with most of them getting between $15 and $25 monthly, depending on their grade.
This is way below the 15 percent of basic salary civil servants were demanding in their position paper handed to the government in December last year.
He said the scrapping of the rural allowance had seen most civil servants shunning remote areas.
"Rural teachers have been getting this for the past three months and this mere gesture of putting that five percent is an indication that rural teachers are recognised," he said.
"What is now needed is for the government to continue working on the percentage such that it becomes significant because those in remote areas have to be cushioned from the hard conditions peculiar with those areas."
Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe secretary general, Rayond Majongwe, said: "There is need to define who qualifies for a rural allowance because those in peri-urban areas also consider themselves as in rural areas.
"These are some of the issues that we're going to discuss when we meet on the 27th of this month."
Source - chronicle
