UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS FOR 304 SUPPORT STAFF

MBABANE – About 160 support staff have been retrenched since the country’s initial partial lockdown in March last year while 144 have been laid off. 

This was revealed by Phumelele Zulu of the Swaziland Union in Learning and Allied Institutions (SULAI). She stated that the union had a membership of about 800 and 18 per cent have been laid off while 20 per cent have been retrenched.

Zulu said a great percentage of the remaining employees had not received their salaries dating back to August last year. 

“One way around this is to have the schools reopened and we fully support government on its proposed dates for the reopening of schools. However, we are mindful of the threat posed by the virus to all the employees and our plea to government is for it to ensure that everything that needs to be done for the safe return of employees to work, is done,” she said.

Zulu said they were supporting the ministry’s document on two fronts. One was that the funding to remunerate the support staff could only be available if schools would reopen and government paid the free primary education (FPE) and the orphan vulnerable children (OVC) funds to schools. 

“The support staff is not prioritised by the schools. Currently, the little that they receive from this funding is diverted to other prioritised areas and the employees are not remunerated,” she said. 

Zulu said the other reason was that the children had been home for a long time now and if they continued remaining home, the implication were, therefore, harmful.

Closed

“Children are nurtured in three dimensions and these are Christian education, school education and home education. With churches and schools closed, they are only left with one dimension and some of them do not have parents and they lack all three dimensions. The more they remain at home, the more their way of thinking and doing things gets off the rail and the implications are harmful,” she said. 

Government has proposed that schools be reopened on February 23, 2021.

This publication reported early last year that about 516 of SULAI members were owed salaries dating back to October 2019. At the time, Zulu said an average salary for a support staff employee was E2 000 and this meant the over 500 employees were owed over E5 million, considering that their salaries were likely to be paid in February 2020, when schools reopened and would be back-paid from October.

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