MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

East Cape Education Department – Thus Far and NO Further

By

The Department of Education in the Eastern Cape must stop shifting the goal posts. I have today approached the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee of Education, Mzoleli Mrara, to convene an urgent, special meeting to demand concrete answers from the department for once and for all on the fate of thousands of teachers in the province. MPLs and the public at large are tired of the department’s confusing and dissimilar responses. It is time that the MEC, Mandla Makupula, and the Superintendent-General, Mthunywa Ngonzo, come with precise answers.

Morale among teachers is at an all time low: relationships are on the rocks, stress levels are unbearable, banks are repossessing vehicles and homes and people have been blacklisted because they have not received their salaries. One wonders how the MEC and SG would cope without pay for six months.

Matters for which no closure has been found up to now are:

  • The remuneration of teachers appointed on a temporary basis since January 2012 but who have not been paid for their services;
  • The non-filling of the more than 7 500 substantive vacant posts;
  • The redeployment of excess teachers;
  • The +/- R68 million in outstanding leave gratuities payable to teachers who have retired; and
  • The R19.6 million in arrear salaries since 2010.

There have been so many different responses from the department. No-one is coming with a definite message. What the DA wants to know is simple: what are the reasons why teachers have not been appointed, why those teachers who have been appointed still don’t have appointment letters and why teachers have not been paid.

The DA also wants to know why there are problems and how quickly the problems can be resolved, whatever they are. We demand that teachers are paid within the next week and that blockages are removed so that teachers can receive what is due to them.

The MEC and SG continue to blame other role players. It is time that they stand up and take responsibility instead of pointing fingers. If the leadership of the department cannot be accountable the DA will have no choice but to once again call for the intervention of the Premier for heads to roll.

The DA believes that every South African should have the right and the opportunity to pursue their dreams and live a life they value. Quality education gives our young people that opportunity. The Eastern Cape government is letting down the youth of this province.

Edmund van Vuuren, MPL

Editor’s Notes: Let’s put this into perspective – I know of local schools that are forking out over a Hundred Thousand a month as a result of temporary teachers having to be paid by governing bodies, and now the parents have to pay more in school fees to catch up.

Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?

So what is happening is that taxpayers are being reamed as a result of utter incompetence in the Education Department and the incompetents still draw a salary. Sometime soon the camel’s back is going to break.

Look carefully at the redeployment of excess teachers matter for a moment – what that means is that some schools have more teachers than required. These teachers are staying at home and drawing a salary because some incompetent pen pusher cannot action a decision to place the teacher in a school that desperately needs staff.

The following two tabs change content below.

Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.