Teachers in Samfya have gone on strike with immediate effect to protest over non payment of various allowances entitled to them.
The teachers resolved to join the strike called by their colleagues in Mansa after a meeting held yesterday with their union representatives.
Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT) district secretary, Kupa Kunda, confirmed the development to ZANIS today.
Mr Kunda said the decision to go on strike was arrived at during a meeting held at Samfya Basic school attended by 113 teachers.
He said the meeting was convened by the three teachers unions, the Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT), Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia (BETUZ) and Secondary School Teachers Union of Zambia (SESTUZ).
Mr Kunda said teachers are protesting over non payment of their fixed band allowance which has been outstanding since 2003 and non-payment of their settling in allowances, among other things.
And according to a copy of minutes of the meeting obtained by ZANIS, the teachers also advanced five other grievances that government has allegesly failed to address as reasons for their strike action.
The five grievances are failure by government to effect change on salary notches, underpayment of 40 per cent housing allowances, non payment of extra and responsibility allowances, and non payment of salary arrears to teachers who are upgraded.
They also want government to pay them housing allowances for the months of May and June which were not paid last year.
Meanwhile, Mr Kunda disclosed to ZANIS that the union will later this morning meet with Provincial Education Officer, Florence Kanchebele, to discuss other complaints that head teachers have raised against the office of the district education board secretary (DEBS).
He said head teachers are complaining that the DEBS office in Samfya is levying schools amounts between K250,000 and K500,000 from their monthly allocations meant for purchase of learning materials.
He said the DEBS office is collecting the money purporting that the fund is being used for monitoring school activities in the district.
He said the union wants this matter clarified because what is supposed to be the practice is that the DEBS office needs to budget for monitoring activities instead of levying the money from school allocations meant for materials.
And ZNUT trustee, Victoria Chituta, appealed to the Ministry of Education to institute investigations on how the money levied from school allocations was being used.
Ms Chituta said she has tried to investigate with schools in other districts of the province whether their DEBS’ offices were deducting money from monthly school allocations meant for materials.
She said so far it is only in Samfya where such levies are effected, hence the need for Ministry of Education to intervene in the matter.
ZANIS/ENDS/IMD/EB