Zimbabweans turn to wheeling, dealing to top-up salaries
Monday, 18 June 2007
HARARE, June 17 (AFP): Zimbabwean schoolteacher Sylvia Ngandu is unapolegetic about juggling her responsibilities in the classroom with her other job selling fruit and vegetables in order to make ends meet.
"At first the school head threatened me with suspension for bringing stuff to sell during work hours," says Ngandu as she describes her 'remote control' method of teaching at a primary school near Harare.
Ngandu says she goes to the marketplace every morning to buy merchandise for the day before proceeding to work.
After leaving their class with work to do for the day or assigning a 12- year-old prefect to take charge, she then pops out to do a job that used to be derided as only fit for semi- literate women and school dropouts.
With world-record inflation now perched at over 3,000 per cent and wages perpetually lagging behind spiralling prices of basic foodstuffs, stories such as Ngandu's are becoming ever more commonplace.
As the saying goes, most Zimbabweans are going to work to "steal or deal."
The cost of basic foodstuffs and services required monthly by a family of five was estimated at 1.7 million Zimbabwean dollars in March. The monthly salary for an average urban worker ranges from 90,000 dollars-not enough to buy a two-litre bottle of cooking oil -- 500,000 dollars.
The price of a 10-kilogramme packet of the staple maize meal is 114,000 Zimbabwean dollars and a loaf of bread costs 18,000 dollars.
"At first the school head threatened me with suspension for bringing stuff to sell during work hours," says Ngandu as she describes her 'remote control' method of teaching at a primary school near Harare.
Ngandu says she goes to the marketplace every morning to buy merchandise for the day before proceeding to work.
After leaving their class with work to do for the day or assigning a 12- year-old prefect to take charge, she then pops out to do a job that used to be derided as only fit for semi- literate women and school dropouts.
With world-record inflation now perched at over 3,000 per cent and wages perpetually lagging behind spiralling prices of basic foodstuffs, stories such as Ngandu's are becoming ever more commonplace.
As the saying goes, most Zimbabweans are going to work to "steal or deal."
The cost of basic foodstuffs and services required monthly by a family of five was estimated at 1.7 million Zimbabwean dollars in March. The monthly salary for an average urban worker ranges from 90,000 dollars-not enough to buy a two-litre bottle of cooking oil -- 500,000 dollars.
The price of a 10-kilogramme packet of the staple maize meal is 114,000 Zimbabwean dollars and a loaf of bread costs 18,000 dollars.