Teachers salary increase will trigger more inflation – Economists
Brian Rungano Temba
UNIONS representing teachers on Monday met Primary and Secondary Education minister, Torerai Moyo, over their grievances including their demands for a US$1 200 monthly salary.
The educators are demanding United States dollar salaries to make ends meet in an economy where the local currency has been depreciating sharply due to prices of basic goods and services rising.
Workers in the private sector are also at loggerheads with their employers as they press for better salaries especially in foreign currency.
Speaking during the meeting with the minister, Federation of Zimbabwe Educators Union of Zimbabwe (FOZEU) president, Akuneni Maphosa, said the educators were wallowing in poverty.
“Let’s see the ministry lobbying and promoting so that its employees are taken seriously, and their welfare looked after,” Maphosa said.
“The economic issues have also led to a distorted salary structure where senior grades now find themselves being remunerated comparatively lower than their juniors.”
Local Economists have credited the dire economic condition to profiteering motives by the private sector that have seen a huge difference between basic Commodities sold in informal tuckshops in the high density suburbs and established shops which seem to be inflating the prices by well over 200 percent of the wholesale prices.
“They both buy from the same wholesalers yet retail prices are world’s apart. Sanity has to be brought to the retail sector. Whatever adjustments can be made to the salaries for teachers can follow after we have fixed the main cause, otherwise it becomes a viscous cycle of running still,” a local Economist told TateguruTV.
They also called for Finance Ministry to invoke an approach that fosters healthy competition to bring sanity tobthe prices, creating through capicitating the informal and small to medium enterprises who are at the moment friendly on the wallet of civil servants.
A chase after the poverty datum line will exercerbate the rate of inflation. According to Zimstats The Food Poverty Line (FPL) for one person in November 2023 was ZWL87,756.00.
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