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CHINA REJECTS ESWATINI TEACHERS

26/01/2020 01:36:00 BY WELCOME DLAMINI

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MBABANE – Mainland China’s tough stance against the Kingdom of Eswatini is biting hard. A group of teachers has had their hopes of relocating to the People’s Republic of China to take up teaching positions in the communist country blown sky high.

The teachers had applied for English teaching posts in China through a local agent identified as Study Consult Group, which required each applicant to pay E1 500 (US$100).
It is reported that the job comes with a E30 000 monthly salary, which is said to be a good pay because of China’s low cost of living.
All along, the teachers did not believe the agent from when they were initially told in September last year that the government of Mainland China was refusing to grant them visas because they were from Eswatini.

The teachers believed, as some still do, that the agent scammed them.
Sikelela Dlamini, the Secretary General of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), sympathised with the teachers because he said he understood that they applied for the jobs because of lack of employment in Eswatini.

“Blame has to be apportioned to our country and government for failure to forge diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. We know that China has good investment opportunities for African countries, particularly infrastructure. Chinese development initiatives have a human face, meaning there are human beings at the centre,” he said.

He also blamed government for failing to create teaching posts for these teachers.

exposes

“This exposes the teachers. We have it in authority that there are so many teaching posts in the country which can be upgraded to fit these teachers,” Dlamini said.
Minister of Education and Training Lady Howard said she could not comment on the matter because she was not aware of such developments.
Some of the teachers were reportedly temporarily employed in the country while others were still fresh from university.

The Times SUNDAY has learnt that the agent ran a one-day advert in the local media last year calling upon interested teachers to submit applications.
After submitting the applications, the agent then held a meeting with the teachers at the Mbabane Library where it was decided that a WhatsApp group be formed to act as a medium where they would be updated about their applications and all other information needed to secure the jobs.
To say that the teachers were excited about the job prospects would be an understatement; they were exuberant.

The teachers were made to submit their CVs and also had videos of each one of them taken and reportedly sent to the schools in China where they were reportedly much sought-after.
A representative of Study Consult Group – the agent, Mondie Mala- mbe, confirmed to this publication that the Chinese embassy offices in Sandton and Pretoria had refused to process visa applications for the teachers, hence the job opportunities eventually fell off.
Through one of the messages he sent to the WhatsApp group, Malambe told the teachers, who were growing impatient, that the whole process was being jeopardised by politics.

He told the teachers that the China prospects were being abandoned because ‘political tensions are escalating between Swaziland (Eswatini) and China; with that it’s a no go’.
Malambe said Study Consult Group was actually running a ‘study abroad programme’ since inception but, based on demand, decided to tap into the ‘work abroad programme’.

“I went to a meeting with a company in Sandton called Blue Planet Travel Services which held a contract that needed 300 teachers per year in China. What we did under our corporate division was to enter into an agreement with them, a joint venture partnership, to feed them with these teachers and invest in that programme. Their networks were very solid,” he said.

awaited

Malambe said after the advert and response from teachers, they shot the videos and the sent them to their partners and then awaited that however took forever.
“We then started experiencing problems with our partners who told us that the schools in China were saying they could issue the jobs but would have a challenge with their local government because these teachers were from Eswatini.

‘‘We told our partners that but we had discussed this previously and were given guarantee that because it’s under contract, they could be squeezed into the system. But they said emaSwati would have a problem at the visa application centre in Sandton; that was the first red flag,” he further explained.

He said they then started engaging other agents as well within the China work programme because they had now built a relationship with their local clients.
Malambe said the value they offered was such that they walked their clients throughout the journey; if they hit snags, the agent sorts them out.
“Basically we are like a military; we fight wars that our clients don’t know we are fighting. So what you guys are seeing now we knew about it last year. It started affecting us from July last year.

‘‘When this started happening, we first thought it was just delays in the process and started pushing our partners but got no responses until after more than two to four weeks. That response would be that they are processing it.

‘‘Normally, the process would take only two days. Next thing we were told by the China schools that they cannot take our teachers even though they are qualified and there was no proper explanation to a point where we literally had an altercation with the manager at the Visa altercation centre in Sandton,” he said.

The agent’s representative said even their networks did not understand what was happening; no one did.
He said the teachers also did not understand this because they had invested their money.

Malambe said they (agent) also lost big due to the collapse of the deal because they had invested US$200 into one teacher.
He said the process was such that they were going to recover their investment by docking a certain percentage from the teachers’ salaries every month for a specific period.

“We lost big. The teachers became frustrated with the delays and they were then quick to say this is a scam. We then tried compensatory measures and did our calculations so as to retain good relations with the teachers.

lost

‘‘Otherwise we lost bigger than they lost but they wouldn’t understand it. They feel like we played a part in this thing happening the way it happened,” he said.
He said there was no solution in sight except to abandon any attempts to find jobs in China for emaSwati.
He said as they were working on compensating the teachers, the best they could afford was E500 per teacher and that this would also take some time to be processed.

“The reason for the E500 is so we maintain good relations with the teachers because they do not understand all the things we went through. We can also arrange that they go to other countries but they are now sceptical.
‘‘We are looking at other countries besides China, such as the United Kingdom. The China problem is not something that will be resolved anytime soon,” Malambe stated.

Meanwhile, it is understood that all they needed to do to get the China jobs was to provide their certification and the starting point was English because this is a premium offering in China.
Malambe said chidren of high profile people were the ones who took up English lessons; so that was why the salary of an English teacher was around E30 000 a month.