Zimbabwe Ready To Export Teachers To Rwanda

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Zimbabwe has started working on bilateral arrangements with Rwanda to export local teachers to the east-central African country, a senior government official has said.

Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Paul Mavima said the government was excited to co-operate with Rwanda on the exportation of teachers.

This comes after Rwandan President Paul Kagame called for the importation of Zimbabwean teachers.

Kagame was speaking during the Zimbabwe-Rwanda Investment and Trade Conference in Kigali last week where he called on the two nations to work closely and provide teachers to his country.

Mavima expressed excitement over Kagame’s proposal saying Zimbabwe should benefit from human capital development. He said:

I’m really glad that the Rwandan President has called on us to provide teachers. We are going to work as quickly as possible to come up with that bilateral arrangement.
And this one would serve as a model that we can use in other areas. We have medical professionals who are going abroad, we have social welfare officials who are going abroad, we have engineers who have gone to many places.
We need to have a formal programme that makes sure that our country is benefiting from human capital development. By the way, the development of human capital is a national responsibility.
We put money into training teachers, nurses and engineers, and we should, as a country, also benefit when our people go abroad.

He said countries such as China and Cuba, among other nations, benefit from exporting their skilled workers.

Mavima also said through a bilateral agreement, Zimbabwe could earn foreign currency by taxing professionals working in other countries. He added:

This would be the first of its kind so that next time when we export our human capital, we would already have a model which we can base on. It’s unlike in situations where people migrate individually and go to other countries.
This time it’s going to be a bilateral arrangement; we will know how many teachers we have sent there.
We will also know what conditions of service they are going to work under, what kind of protection they have, what kind of taxation system, how do we have a system that part of their taxation in Rwanda benefits Zimbabwe in a formal manner.
–Chronicle