Dear Editor

We are students from various tertiary colleges Morgan Zintec, Belvedere, Mkoba, Bondolfi, Madziwa the intake groups of 2019 who started the teaching practice in January 2021.

We signed appointment letters to commence our teaching practices in January 2021 and were supposed to finish in December 2021 as per the contract forms signed.

Due to covid lockdown measures which were put in place, schools were not opened for the second term of 2021.

Schools then opened on 17 September for the school learning term and closed on 14 December, the same month of December the student teachers from the above mentioned colleges did not receive their bonuses with no explanations.

As we were supposed to return to the colleges for the final year, we were then told that the last term of last year was our 2nd year and we are to continue with the first term of 2022 on teaching practice.

We continued with the teaching practice till schools closed on 7 April 2022 with no allowances be it Covid allowances, normal RTGS allowances and our December 2021 bonuses still were not paid.

Towards the end of March 2022 in fact the 3rd week, we were told to complete TY 30 forms and a week later we told to complete appointment letters hoping that at least we would get our salaries by the payday of this month of April. Still nothing materialised.

It looks like the SSB officials are working in cahoots with some college officials to defraud the students teachers our hard to get teaching practice allowances.

We only heard that as of late during the month of March, after some behind the scenes consultations SSB then managed to pay Bondolfi students teachers only and the rest of the student teachers from colleges like Morgan Zintec, Madziva, Mkoba are still waiting to receive our December 2021 bonuses, Covid allowances and actual salary/allowances from 10 December 2021 to 7 April 2022 as per the letters of appointment signed during the month of March 2022.