Zimbabwe to bond university students, radio report says

May 20, 2007, 13:52 GMT

Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's top university students could be forced into the civil service and banned from emigrating in a new scheme designed to stop penniless professionals escaping the country, it was reported Sunday.

Under a cadetship scheme, scholars who get their university fees paid for by President Robert Mugabe's government would now be compelled to join the civil service and would not be allowed to emigrate for several years, state radio announced.

University and college students educated through government loans and grants would now be compelled to join the civil service for varying periods before being allowed to work in the private sector or to emigrate, the radio said.

Secretary for Higher and Tertiary Education Washington Mbizvo said the scheme would come into effect next month.

Cash-strapped Zimbabwe has been battling a massive exodus of highly-trained professionals ever since the country was plunged into economic crisis seven years ago.

With annual inflation now at more than 3,700 per cent, doctors, nurses, teachers and lecturers have all fled abroad, leaving many public institutions like hospitals seriously under-staffed.

Doctors from Cuba now man many of Zimbabwe's rural hospitals. Zimbabwe's junior doctors complain they are paid less than 1 US dollar a day.

With no end in sight to the economic meltdown, discontent is rising.

Reports in the privately-owned Standard newspaper Sunday said civil servants had rejected a 200-per-cent pay offer from the government as peanuts. They are planning fresh strikes next month, the paper said.