The global impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has continued to strike hard on most African economic sectors. Zambia has put in place several stringent measures on how to prevent the spread of the disease, with 12 cases recorded so far.
One of the measures was the indefinite closure of all schools and colleges across the country, but the impact of these preventive measures have economic ramifications. Already, the tourism industry has issued a notice to put non essential workers on unpaid leave to save their businesses from collapse.
On the education sector, the impact has also hit hard most especially on the private schools payrolls and how to financing it in this event we’re there is closure of schools. Most private schools in Zambia fully depend on the operational of the school to generate revenue to meet teachers salaries and other operational costs.
Private school owners have revealed that teachers may have to go without salaries should the situation take longer, because the schools depend on the tuition and other schools fees that come from learners parents and sponsors to pay their staff salaries.
In an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Chalo Trust School Director, Jane Chileshe said that as long as parents do not pay the school fees for their children or wards, the school cannot afford to pay salaries to teachers.
“For us in the Private schools sector, money for salaries comes from the school fees, some parents pay monthly or have payment plans, so if no fees are paid, we don’t have adequate resources to pay our teachers as well, unfortunately we are not like in the United States of America – USA were some aid packages to the private sector have been announced”.
“Teachers are home right now, and there is no pay for them because there is nowhere to get the money from. Unless if we could get some loans from somewhere, then we can be able to give the teachers something to sustain them, but now we have nowhere to get money,’’ she said.
Mrs Chileshe further said it has been so rough on the side of income for the school and that most private schools are in the same shoes, such that the school is even failing to pay women operational cost such as Zesco bills.
“So we risk that Zesco will just come and shut down, because the closure of schools is indefinite it’s hard to even promise them that we will pay on this or that date, the COVID-19 impact is really so hard, we do not know when the situation will normalize,” added Mrs Chileshe.
Another Private School owner (Spring Way School), Mrs Euriver Mulamata told ZBT in another exclusive interview on March 25, 2020, that while it is a good move to close the schools in an effort to fight the deadly virus, it is unfortunate that the economy will suffer the worst consequences in terms of income to especially for private Schools.
‘‘For me all am praying for is that this situation gets to an end quickly before affecting the next pay day for our teachers, because for now we cannot comment on the way forward for the teachers, because it is too early and we don’t even know how long the shutdown of schools will take,’’ she said.
Ministry of Health announced the indefinite closure of all Schools, Colleges and Universities that was effective on March 20 2020, as part of strategy to halt the possible spread of the coronavirus – COVID 19, which has affected many countries across the globe.
Zambia has today recorded 12 confirmed cases as announced by the Head of State on 25 March 2020. This rise in cases may mean that the country needs more time to combat the spread. And more time means month ends will come and salaries will need to be paid.
Some sections of society have been calling for a complete lockdown of the country, closing down of all borders, but the flip side is that Zambia has limited reserves and savings to draw from. When the country boarders are shut, the wheels of commerce will grind to a halt and revenue collection by both the Zambia Revenue Authority – ZRA and other government non tax revenue collecting agents will slow down and dry up, which would compound the pandemic socio and economic impact.
Analysts at ZBT have called for balancing the actions for prevention CoVID 19 spread and the resulting socio-economic impacts so that the country can be able to find the delicate middle ground to go through what some have described as being likened to going through a world war 3.
