NO SALARY FOR 23 CONTRACT TEACHERS SINCE JANUARY

MBABANE – A total of 23 contract teachers have not been paid since the beginning of the year.

These teachers, who were engaged on contract basis last academic year, are said to have been engaged by their substantive line managers to retain their positions despite the lapse of their contracts.

According to Siphasha Dlamini, Secretary General of the Swaziland Association of School Administrators (SASA), members of her organisation had reported their frustration following that they were instructed to remunerate the contract teachers by a senior management team in the Ministry of Education and Training.

SASA is an association of school head teachers and deputy head teachers under the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT).
Dlamini said the reason the head teachers had resorted to verbally engage the contract teachers was that they were of the view that they had already recommended them to the Teaching Service Commission (TSC).

Recommended

“In previous years, once we had recommended the teachers to the TSC, they would be returned to the schools seeking their (contract teachers) services,” Dlamini said.

She said it was on this premise that some of their members did the same thing even this year, as they anticipated that they would have their contracts renewed.
Dlamini further said the decision to engage the contract teachers while awaiting the TSC to respond was on the basis that pupils would  remain idle at school. However, in this instance, this decision has backfired. “At this point, we’ve decided to conduct a survey wherein we seek to establish the number of schools affected and the number of our members who are facing this challenge.”

She said the number of the contract teachers who were not remunerated since the beginning of the first-term could increase. Dlamini further expressed the challenges that were experienced by the schools, citing that had the head teachers ignored the need for the contract teachers, pupils would have remained idle at schools.

Seconding Dlamini’s submission was the Secretary General of SNAT, Sikelela Dlamini, who said the most challenging thing about this dilemma was that the contract teachers engaged by the head teachers were demotivated.

He said: “Imagine going to work daily and not being paid at the end of the month; nobody can stand that. Now they are saying head teachers should pay them – yet the contract teachers were not working for the head teachers but for government – in the various public schools.”

Sikelela said a major challenge was that schools were broke as the allocated E560 for the free primary education (FPE) – which is funding primary schools – was not sufficient.

He bemoaned that some schools had recently received the grants and were already in a deficit given that a bulk of the money was eroded by inflation.  “Together with SASA, we are looking at ways to deal with this issue as it borders on the welfare of our cadre,” Sikelela said.

Meanwhile, Secretary of the TSC, Ncamsile Mtshali, could not be reached for comment. Her phone rang unanswered. Worth noting is that Simanga Mamba, Chairman of the TSC, said the Ministry of Education and Training had now produced enough qualified teachers with the Primary Teaching Diploma (PTD).
 “We were also celebrating being able to have enough qualified teachers for primary schools,” Mamba said. Following this milestone, Mamba said this year, the TSC would not recruit unqualified temporary teachers for primary schools. Unlike in previous years, where over 4 000 temporary teachers were engaged by the ministry for posts in primary schools, this academic year, all positions would be offered to qualified teachers for these grades.

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