Zimbabwe urges neighbours to stop taking teachers

HARARE - President Robert Mugabe's government will ask neighbouring countries to stop "poaching" Zimbabwean teachers, it said on Thursday.

Thousands of skilled workers -- including doctors, nurses, engineers and teachers -- have been forced abroad by an acute economic crisis which many blame on Mugabe.

Zimbabwe has seen inflation rise over 7,900 percent, and it suffers chronic shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel that has left many workers unable to feed their families.

The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted Education, Sport and Culture Minister Aeneas Chigwedere on Friday as saying the government would approach its southern African neighbours to ask them to stop taking Zimbabwe's teachers.

"What we need is to sit down with the neighbouring countries and make sure that they apply to government for teachers, instead of poaching the teachers," he said.

Chigwedere added Zimbabwe would also try improve wages and conditions, and offer contracts to new graduate teachers to ensure they stay in their jobs.

Teachers went on strike last month to press demands for huge pay increases, but returned to work after government increased salaries and promised to regularly review pay, allowances and working conditions.

Teachers currently earn Z$17 million (US$567 at the official rate and US$17 at the black market rate) a month, and are, along other government workers, demanding another wage rise.

Magistrates, prosecutors and court clerks have been on strike since last week for higher wages to cope with hardships in a country which the World Bank says has the fastest shrinking economy in the world outside a war zone.

Mugabe, 83, has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. He says the economy has been sabotaged by Western powers opposed to his seizures of white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.