TEACHER unions have called for calm amid fears that thousands of teaching posts countrywide could be affected by the government’s austerity measures.
This follows reports that because the bulk of the provincial education budgets in various provinces are for wages, and they have been decreased, some jobs would be at stake.
So far only the Western Cape has officially been informed that more than 2 000 posts would be affected.
South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) General Secretary Dr Mugwena Maluleke told the Independent on Saturday that teachers who were permanently employed would not be retrenched.
He said the government had not invoked Section 189 of the Labour Relations Act to indicate that retrenchments were on the cards, nor had it discussed this with the unions.
If that happens, Sadtu would be ready to take to the streets, he said.
“These are the posts for temporary teachers, substitute teachers, for teachers who are on leave, on sick leave or any other leave which is a long-term leave, and then these are also the promotional posts that would have been advertised and so forth.”
Maluleke said according to the government, there wasn’t enough funding to fill these gaps in the system, but he warned that this would lead to overcrowded classes and have an impact on the “socio-emotional” state of pupils as well as their teachers.
“There is no way when a teacher is absent from work that there will be nobody teaching the children. It’s impossible, you cannot do that because of the long-term damage to the children you won’t be able to reverse. Hence education is unique and even the Treasury knows very well that you have got to protect the budget for education,” he said.
Maluleke said unions and education MECs would meet the national Department of Basic Education next week to discuss the matter.
He said the estimated number of posts that could be affected in KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo was an estimated 11 000 posts each; 2 000 to 3 000 in the Western Cape; about 9 000 in the Eastern Cape; up to 5 000 each in Mpumalanga and the North West; and the Northern Cape less than 1 000. So far Gauteng had not given an indication of the number of posts that might be affected.
The National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) said there hadn’t been any discussion about retrenchments; instead there was a situation where some posts just could not be afforded.
Naptosa CEO Thirona Moodley said several meetings were held at a national level to mitigate the issue which must be finalised at the end of this month (September).
“There has been one meeting with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and there is another meeting scheduled, possibly sometime next week. So we don’t know if there’s going to be a bailout for education or something like that. But in most provinces, the compensation of employees has exceeded the ratio that they should be paying. It’s not the first time: it’s been like this for a number of years. We’ve always been over-budgeting for compensation of employees. We need so many teachers to fill the classrooms, but that is the irony of it all, we need these teachers but the budget doesn’t cater for them.”
Department of Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said Minister Siviwe Gwarube convened a meeting a week ago in which she asked provinces to do an analysis of the impact of the budget cuts.
“The work is still being done. At the right time she will convene another meeting to receive a report from all provinces. When she is ready, she will then request a meeting with the Minister of Finance,” said Mhlanga.