At least 300 000 children have dropped out of school in Zimbabwe since a government-driven campaign to demolish shacks and other unauthorised homes was launched nearly six weeks ago, a teachers’ union said on Tuesday.
”The government’s Operation Murambatsvina has caused severe devastation on the education sector,” Raymond Majongwe, leader of the militant Progressive Teachers’ Union (PTUZ), told a meeting of residents in Harare.
Police have been carrying out the two-pronged ”Operation Restore Order” and ”Operation Murambatsvina”, (literally translated as ”drive out the rubbish”), flattening backyard shacks and shop stalls in cities and towns across Zimbabwe.
The United Nations estimates that 200 000 people have lost their homes in the campaign but the opposition says the figure is closer to 1,5-million homeless.
”There have been massive school dropouts. More than 300 000 schoolchildren are out of school as we speak right now as a result of this so-called clean-up campaign,” Majongwe told the meeting.
The Harare residents met as UN envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka was in the second day of her fact-finding mission in Zimbabwe, compiling data on people affected by the government clean-up campaign.
”We also have a list of more that 2 000 teachers who have been left without homes and yet are expected to go to work,” said Majongwe.
He said that classes had been disrupted in many schools as teachers were busy looking for accommodation while pupils skipped classes to help their parents look after their possessions which had been left in the open.
”There is no learning that is going on in the schools. We have what we now call remote-control teaching where the teacher gives his class assignments in the morning and goes away the rest of the day to look for accommodation.
”There is also high absenteeism as schoolchildren help their parents look for accommodation or look after property after their houses were destroyed by the police.”
Zimbabwe police have used bulldozers and sledgehammers to demolish shacks and homes, destroy shop stalls and market areas and detain tens of thousands of people in what the government has described as a campaign to rid the country of squalor and crime.-Sapa-AFP