SOME FORCES WORKING AGAINST GOVT’

MBABANE – Are head teachers dicing with the future of pupils? This question emanates from allegations circulating in the higher echelons of the Ministry of Education and Training’s bureaucracy.

This publication gathered that not all schools had forwarded their requests for the free primary education (FPE) programme to the ministry.
This is something which head teachers have vehemently denied.

Sources claimed that the ongoing unrest within the civil service, which also involves teachers, was to blame for the failure by head teachers to submit requests for the payment of FPE grants.

“There are strong beliefs that there could be some forces which want to portray government as being inefficient with regard to the FPE grants. These forces are frustrating the process through ensuring that the FPE requests are not submitted on time to the relevant ministry.
“However, government seems to be aware of such moves and is doing everything to ensure that schools operate normally and the children are not affected in any way,” the source said.

Ignorance

However, head teachers claimed ignorance of such moves as they reiterated that schools had not received a cent from government as part of the FPE grants. Secretary General of the Swaziland Association of School Administrators (SASA), Siphasha Dlamini, said this was outright nonsense.
She said schools lacked basic amenities, teaching aid and needed to pay salaries for support staff. Dlamini said these allegations were far-fetched.
“Head teachers need the money to fund the pupils’ education. So, how can they sabotage what benefits them?”

Dlamini said primary school head teachers were always first in line due to the fact that it was the only source of funds to run schools that they had.
The unionist said any head teacher who did not submit the request for FPE grants had challenges with personal identity numbers (PINs). This, she said, was the biggest headache for school administrators as some pupils did not have them (PINs).
“One head teacher reported that at his school, he could not claim for 97 pupils as they did not have PINs. He was advised that pupils without PINs should not be on the list submitted to the Ministry of Education and Training.”

Challenge

Dlamini proceeded to state that this was a national challenge as their members from all regions had reported the same challenge.
The school administrator rhetorically questioned: “What should we do when faced with this as we can’t take every pupil to their homestead and force the guardians to register them at the constituency centre?” She said their obligation was to advise the families and guide them to where they could be assisted if they saw that there were challenges with the PINs.

Perpetuate

Meanwhile, the sources alleged that the reason some head teachers had not submitted the requests for FPE grants was that they wanted to perpetuate the upcoming mass stay-away by public sector associations (PSAs).

The intended mass stay-away emanates from an impasse between government and the PSAs on the cost-of-living (CoLA) demands. PSAs demanded 6.55 per cent for their CoLA while government offered zero per cent, citing fiscal challenges.

The failure to settle on a figure resulted in the parties signing a deadlock. The stay-away is anticipated to start next week Monday and be on a rolling action or until the PSAs and government reach a compromise.

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