Paul Nyathi

Today is World Teachers Day which is met with gloom for Zimbabwean teachers who are on an industrial action.

Commemorations to mark the World Teachers’ Day, also known as International Teachers Day, are held every year on October 5 to honour teachers and recognise their contributions to education and development.

Many events are organised on this day to emphasise the importance of teachers and learning and to raise the profile and increase the awareness and understanding of the teaching profession and its importance.

The theme for World Teachers’ Day 2020 is ‘Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future’. As the Covid-19 pandemic affected the education process thus creating challenges for teachers across the world. It created a need to revisit the method of giving education.

UNESCO announced October 5 as World Teachers’ Day in 1994. The day is celebrated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) along with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Education International.

Hundreds of Zimbabwean teachers demanding better pay have stayed at home as schools reopened after six months of coronavirus restrictions.

Teachers “did not turn up for duty”, Raymond Majongwe, secretary general of one of the country’s largest unions, the Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, told journalists recently.

Majongwe said teachers battle to “survive” and that they can’t even afford to send their own children to school.

Teachers’ salaries, he said, have been heavily eroded by inflation – which stands at over 700% – to an average equivalent of $40 a month, down from $550 in October 2018.

He said:

Forty dollars is an insult. Teachers have lost their ranking in society. It’s actually an insult to be a teacher. It’s a curse.