THE Chief Executive Officer of the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (ZIMTA) earns a cool monthly salary of $10,891 before taxes and all deductions, a revelation that will certainly not sit well with ordinary teachers the majority of whom wallow in poverty.

A leaked payslip of Mr. Sifiso Ndlovu, the ZIMTA CEO, shows that he earns a basic salary of $3,800, but because of a labyrinth of allowances he creams off a total of nearly $11,000 in one month alone.

That is more than twenty times what is taken home monthly by an ordinary teacher he represents.

Mr. Ndolvu earns a fuel allowance of $780 per month, which sits pretty much above what the ordinary teacher takes home overally.

Still with that monthly fuel allowance in place, Mr. Sifiso Ndlovu creams off another cool $200 for “transport”, whatever that means.

For the month of January 2019, he got paid the following per month:

• Communication allowance of $2,000;
• Basic salary of $3,808;
• Fuel allowance of $780;
• Transport allowance of $200;
• Housing allowance of $260;
• Grocery allowance of $82;
• Representation allowance of $761;
• among other dues.

Teachers have persistently complained of poor salaries and conditions of work.

Early this week, rival teachers’ unions in Zimbabwe started fighting each other amid accusations that the two largest teachers’ bodies which called off last week’s planned strike have sold out the labour struggle.

The Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (ARTRUZ) accused its biggest rivals, the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) and the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association (Zimta) of selling out the labour struggle by buckling under pressure from the employer before their demands had been met.

In a statement released on Monday, ARTUZ said: “The wheels of inevitability have finally delivered the dreaded, but expected reality, sister unions have jumped ship. Our battle for a living wage, which we began in earnest with a 275km salary caravan from Mutare to Harare — followed up with a salary camp at (Finance) minister Mthuli [Ncube]’s office and capped with a historic job action have been compromised. The so-called big unions stepped in and gave false hope to the teachers, yet the intention was to rock the ship, which was gathering momentum.”

But PTUZ president Takavafira Zhou said they called off the strike because thousands of their members, who had heeded the call and stayed away, would have lost their February salaries.

— Zoom Zim