By: Vetondouua Tjivikua & Tjizouje Kazombungo
Secretary-General of Teacher Union of Namibia, Mahongora Kavihuha, has threatened to take unspecified action against the government if teachers’ salaries are not adjusted.
This comes after the government decided to freeze public service salaries last year due to a weak economy coupled with a tight budget.
He said, “We said it then, and we repeat it today that should the government fail to effect meaningful salary adjustments for civil servants this year, we shall resort to measures that will not be pleasurable for the government and the country at large”.
Civil servants have gone for over seven years now without salary adjustments, and Kavihuha said the standard of living in the country has gone down the drain.
“You have heard it being said that 1,6 million Namibians live in abject poverty, and you and I see this daily. Who does not see how our people have been reduced to scrounging food and other sources of livelihoods from the dustbins on the streets of this once magnificent city? Yet the government denies the existence of this phenomenon.
“The trade unions and all the progressive civil servant society organisations should stand together and do the right thing; fight for decent wages for civil servants who bear the brand of shouldering the 1,6m poverty-stricken Namibians,” said Kavitha.
Meanwhile, in 2016, the Namibia National Teachers’ Union (Nantu) and Government agreed to keep the teachers’ increment at 5% for that financial year while promising an increase of 9% for the 2017/18 financial year.
The agreement managed to put off a strike that had threatened to collapse the education sector.
Last year the unions requested a 10% increment for salaries across the board, 25% increase to qualifying amounts on housing subsidies, 9% increase on housing allowances, 10% increase on transport for civil servants below management and N$7 per kilometre tariff increase.
In May, the unions received a counteroffer from the government, informing them of its inability to grant salary increments for the 2021/2022 financial year as per their proposal.
The government said, “state finances are already stretched to safeguard current government expenditures, including remuneration-related expenditure to sustain critical public revenue that has significantly reduced due to a decline in the economy.”
