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{
    "id": 583002,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/583002/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 381,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wako",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 366,
        "legal_name": "Amos Sitswila Wako",
        "slug": "amos-wako"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Speaker, for giving me this opportunity. Five minutes is too short but I would say that on an issue that has gone on for more than 18 years, it is time to make a closure. The time to make the closure was the final verdict of the Supreme Court, the highest court of this land. That should have been the final determination by closing the matter, teachers get paid and we move on. One thing that I do not quite understand is the fact that when I read the various documents – and I have been following this dispute very closely – is the order of the Industrial Court which was subsequently confirmed in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court was actually based on the document produced by the economists of Government, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and the Treasury. That document was called the working document. If I remember correctly, the initial claim of the teachers was 150 to 300 percent. However, when the teachers saw that document, and the validity of it, they reduced their demands to 150 percent. When they went to the Industrial Court, it simply gave effect to that working document by the Government. Madam Temporary Speaker, the working document was based on the following; the need to ensure that a total wage bill is sustainable, the need to ensure that the teaching fraternity retains the skills required to execute its functions, the need to recognize productivity and performance. It made comparisons with Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and the United States of America (USA). The document took into account the inflation trends. Therefore, the Industrial Court in more or less adopting the Government working document agreed with them, that 50 to 60 percent is sustainable because that was the basis of that document. We cannot have obtained an order based on a Government document for the Government to now turn around and go into a charade of challenging that order through the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court and now they want us to start all over again on the basis that it is not sustainable. The Government’s own document said that it was sustainable and justified it to the extent that even the TSC recognized in a document signed by the Economic Secretary of the Government that the teachers had not"
}