EUZ conference demands fair pay for educators

The Educators Union of Zimbabwe (EUZ) has called for an immediate overhaul of teachers’ compensation packages, warning that low remuneration continues to severely erode the living standards and morale of educators across the country.

Speaking at the union’s 2026 Annual General Conference, currently underway at Prince Edward High School in Harare, EUZ leadership highlighted the growing economic squeeze on teachers as education stakeholders gather to discuss ongoing national curriculum reforms and learning conditions.

In an interview on the sidelines of the conference, EUZ president Tafadzwa Munodawafa underscored that securing fair pay remains the union’s primary mandate, while acknowledging that teachers are currently forced to find alternative survival mechanisms to stay afloat.

“We appreciate that our teachers don’t earn as they ought to, and as a union, we equip our members with skills on how to survive. We bring them together to form clubs to avoid credit and loan facilities that rip them off. We empower them so that they can be economically independent,” Munodawafa said.

The conference comes at a critical juncture for Zimbabwe’s education sector, as unions push for civil service salaries to match pre-devaluation benchmarks to counter rising living costs.

Also addressing delegates, EUZ secretary-general Tapedza Zhou revealed that teacher representative bodies are taking their grievances directly to the legislature to force policy action.

“As unions, we can be found moving around showing the lawmakers the status of our teachers. We have an opportunity to go around demonstrating what we have always spoken about in terms of the welfare of our teachers,” said Zhou.

Zhou added that direct engagement with parliamentarians remains a crucial strategy to ensure that national budget allocations reflect the urgent needs of classroom educators and the broader school system.

The annual conference is expected to conclude with a comprehensive position paper detailing the union’s formal demands to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and the Ministry of Finance.

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