Times Live
January 22, 2011
By Vladimir Mzaca
Henry Bala, a Bachelor of Arts graduate from a United Kingdom university, is back in the job market.
Bala, having served as an educationist for more than 20 years, retired from civil service in the mid 1990s.
“When I retired things were not bad economically. I was comfortable to go to my rural home in Plumtree,” he said.
Bala’s return to teaching came after a public plea by the Ministry of Education Sports and Culture to try to revive the teaching profession.
In 2009 the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe said about 20 000 teachers had migrated to neighbouring states.
When David Coltart took over the ministry in 2009 he offered amnesty to all teachers who had left the country. The move was to get them back into the system to rekindle the education sector.
“We gave amnesty to teachers who had left. Some of them had even left teaching totally but we had to start somewhere. This has helped in at least giving life to the sector,” said Coltart.
In the past two years the ministry managed to get a few thousand teachers back into the profession.
However, there are still 21000 vacancies, and rural schools are still under- staffed as working conditions and remunerations are not enticing.
In light of this the ministry has started calling back from retirement teachers such as Bala.
“We are engaging teachers from the old school. Retired teachers have been approached and they are free to approach us.
”They can teach for as many years as they want. The response is huge,” said Coltart.
“It is better than doing nothing at home. Our pensions were eroded during the Zimbabwean-dollar era,” said Bala.