Jennifer Dube
4 October 2008
ZIMBABWE'S education standards have not been any worse despite a plethora of problems bedevilling the sector, outgoing finance minister Samuel Mumbengegwi last week said.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Central Statistical Office (CSO) workshop, Mumbengegwi said if anything, the standards have improved and among other indicators is an increased participation of girls.
"I have heard people saying the standards have deteriorated but that has not been proven yet," he said. "The problem is that in a scenario where there are challenges like the ones we are facing as a country, people are quick to draw conclusions."
Mumbengegwi's comments come at a time when two of the country's universities are failing to open for the 2008/09 academic year.
While the University of Zimbabwe has remained closed since the academic year started in August, Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) has reportedly notified students that the opening of the year's first semester, which was scheduled to start last Monday, has been postponed to a later date due to acute water problems, food procurement challenges and staff shortages.
Harare Polytechnic students reportedly rioted last Wednesday after being served with plain sadza for dinner at their canteen, following weeks of salt and cooking oil-free cabbage as their relish.
The rioting students were also irked by the fact that 184 of their colleagues who inhabit one of the institution's six hostels are being forced to use only one toilet as all the others are not functioning.
There have been reports that many schools are also facing similar problems, with some teachers supplementing their salaries through charging their students exorbitant amounts for "extra lessons". It is said that some teachers no longer conduct formal lessons and ask students to pay them as much as $1 000 daily to conduct lessons. Those without the money go without lessons. Some of the teachers reportedly demand bus fare from the students.
"Those who do that are rotten eggs", Mumbengegwi said. "Teachers are given transport allowance and saying it is not enough is no good enough a reason, nothing is ever enough . . .Those who work in town are provided with properly priced buses to come to work".
But a few days before the CSO workshop, the government aligned Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta) had taken an unprecedented move, accusing government of under financing and under resourcing the education system leading to demotivation and brain drain.
"Whereas the Zimbabwe government is a signatory to the Dakar Declaration of 2000, which seeks to achieve Education for All (EFA) by 2015, mid-way that timeline, the (EFA) goals are seriously lagging behind and the achievement of the goal is undermined by remuneration policies, which relegate the teaching professionals to the inferior General Key Scale", Zimta said in a statement.
Mumbengegwi was discussing the workshop's theme "Measuring Progress Towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)".
MDGs are global commitments to improve life for all in the world and they range from halving extreme poverty to putting all children into primary school and stemming the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and AIDS by 2015.
On health, the outgoing minister said things have never been fine in the health sector the world over.
"Places like the UK are worse in that respect although they do not have sanctions against them like us here", he said. "I know of friends who were studying in the UK and would come back home for medication".
He said Zimbabwe boasted of good skill in both the educational and health sector hence the media's daily headlines of brain drain.
"I think the media should start looking at this issue (brain drain) positively", he said. "Our people are going out there because they are on demand....they possess good skill that is why they are needed across the world".
Giving a testimony about using CSO's updated Zimbabwe Statistics Database (Zimdat) for 2008, Fred Ndlovu of the Zimbabwe Local Government Association (ZILGA) said local authorities should help spearhead MDGs.
"When the MDGs were set in the United Nations, we had achieved some of them as a country", he said." But in the past 10 years or so, we had some of them reversed and as local authorities, we have a mandate of putting the country back on track of sustainable development".
Zimbabwe has in the past 10 years been saddled by economic crises which many say seriously undermined the majority's standards of living.
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