Zimbabwean teachers join doctors’ nationwide strike demanding salary in dollars

The ongoing strike by Zimbabwean doctors has got another support. Now the teachers across Zimbabwe have joined the nationwide strike and told the government that they would not report for duty when schools reopen on Tuesday unless their salaries are paid in dollars.

The southern African nation abandoned its own currency in 2009 in favour of the dollar and while the central bank created electronic money, known as Real Time Gross Settlement dollars, or RTGS$, to lend to the government and introduced bond notes backed by the US currency, these trade at a discount to the greenback, making it less appealing as a means of payment. Many retailers are charging about 4.5 times as much for goods paid for electronically as those paid for in paper dollars.

“Our members are unable to report for duty. To enable the teachers to report for work and to subsist, we demand the payment of salaries in US dollars,” the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association said in a statement issued to reporters on Monday in the capital, Harare, as reported by Bloomberg.

The nationwide strike is to demand better pay and conditions in a country grappling with severe dollar shortages and spiralling inflation. An economic crisis in Zimbabwe has spawned a shortage of cash, idling gold mines and leading to scarcities of fuel and food.