By Own Correspondent

THE Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) has warned teachers to exercise extreme caution when engaging in the Rwanda facilitated teacher recruitment exercise saying the opaque deal has a risk of exploitation.

To date Zimbabwe has organised the migration of almost 200 teachers bound to take up jobs in Rwanda.

The educators were selected from a pool of 500 personnel who had applied for the job, following a deal signed last year for an exchange of education personnel between Rwanda and Zimbabwe.

But ARTUZ warned teachers and urged them to exercise due diligence before accepting the offers.

“These teachers were vulnerable to exploitation from day one. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was silent on adhering to international labour standards.

“The government should have deliberately insisted on adherence to set standards, particularly standards defined in our own Constitution and International Labour Organisation Conventions. We will be making a follow-up through our own means to assess the working conditions for these,” ARTUZ president Orbert  Masaraure said.

In Zimbabwe, only 150 000 teachers cater to 4.2 million pupils and the average salary of a teacher is Z$28 800 (just over R2 000 per month).

The minimum requirements for the educators were a bachelor’s degree and post-graduate qualification.

Rwanda officials recently announced that they had increased the salaries of primary school teachers by 88% and the salaries of secondary school teachers by 40%.