SNAT CITES ALLEGED CORRUPTION AT TSC

MANZINI – Alleged corruption within the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) has been cited as one of the reasons teachers under SNAT voted to march next week.

This comes after the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) took the resolution to deliver a petition to various ministries, including the Ministry of Education and Training in Mbabane. Tuesday has been set as the date for the mass teachers’ gathering. This resolution to deliver the petition was taken at the SNAT General Council meeting by over 200 teachers in attendance at the SNAT Centre in Manzini yesterday.

Early in the month, Members of Parliament (MPs) also weighed in on the allegations of corruption within the TSC during the debate of the Ministry of Education and Training annual performance. In the SNAT meeting, in attendance were members of the general council (GC) from various branches of the union, which met to deliberate on a number of agenda items of the day, including delivering the petition.

The deliberations included annual conferences and developments on the SNAT president Mbongwa Dlamini’s issues. According to the SNAT Secretary General, Lot Vilakati, SNAT will forward at least 11 of the list of issues to government. These issues include their opposition to government’s implementation of the performance management system (PMS).

Allowances

There are also issues of the lacking provision of travelling allowances for teachers, their relocation and the continuation of engaging teachers as casuals. There were also issues of contract teachers, union bashing, shortage of teachers and the interference of other ministries in SNAT matters.

When addressing the gathering Vilakati said a lot was not going well within the TSC, adding that it would be a turn of events even for some teachers if they were to testify when a probe was instituted at TSC, saying that they paid certain people to be hired. “It would be sad for a teacher to go and stand before the Anti-Corruption Commission and say that he or she paid someone from the HR for a job,” Vilakati said.

He said such alleged corruption tendencies were reported to emanate from the human resource department of the TSC. He also said it was unfortunate that people who were, reported as corrupt were llegedly not fired but were simply transferred. “But when a teacher commits misconduct he or she is fired,” he said, much to murmurs in the house.

The association also said they intend to get their point across, that the TSC in its current form ought to be reformed. They also said that the TSC allegedly abuses the power of transfers, renewal of contracts and allows others to skip the waiting list to get hired. Vilakati said they were anticipating a meeting with the Minister of Education and Training Owen Nxumalo and the TSC. He said in the past when they tried to have meetings, they had not succeeded, adding that this was one of the thorns that the teachers wanted removed over the operations of the TSC. “That office has a bad attitude,” Vilakati alleged.

Refrian

Vilakati also called for teachers to refrain from accepting anything less than travel allowances that are due to them from government.He said if this was allowed it would be similar to aiding government to accuse them of not delivering on their work once travelling allowance were not provided by the time the PMS was up and running.

One of the teachers reacting to the issues raised encouraged the SNAT members to come in their numbers. The teachers agreed that the petitioning comes after many of these issues had been raised but without adequate attendance to them. The TSC executive secretary Nhlanhla Dlamini could not be reached by the time of going to press.
 

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