MBABANE:Mbongwa Dlamini, the President of the Swaziland National Teacher’s Association said government should stop exploiting contract teachers and should engage them permanently with immediate effect.
These sentiments come after Lady Howard Mabuza, the Minister of Education announced that all teachers including those whose contracts expired last year in December should report to duty on Monday, 22 March 2021 as their contracts would be renewed at a later date.
Speaking to this Swaziland News on Wednesday,the SNAT President said it was quite upsetting that government has instructed teachers whose contracts expired in December to report for work without formally re-engaging them.
“We discovered that the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) Chairman’s contract has recently expired and the Commission cannot work without him. This means the renewal of teachers’ contracts will be delayed until the replacement of the Chairman is found. We would like to plead with head teachers not to exploit our comrades who are working without contracts since government will not pay them for work done before officially engaging them. We demand that government should permanently engage the teachers with immediate effect to avoid such confusion”, said the SNAT President.
When reached for comments, Sibongile Mazibuko, the President of Ngwane National Liberatory Congress ( NNLC) said government was saving money at the expense of Education since the Finance Minister, Neal Rijkenberg was quoted by the CNBC , a South African Television Station as having said the country was planning to do more with less.
“The whole idea of postponing the re-opening of schools was to save money by avoiding the employment of teachers. Now they are anticipating for the beginning of the COVID-19 third wave so they can abort the exercise altogether, this is not caused by the absence of the TSC Chairman as they could always find someone to act on his behalf. The Minister of Finance has been quoted by the media as having said government was planning to do more with less. Now they are saving money at the expense of Education. Teachers should join us in the fight for democracy since once we attain democracy, all teachers will be employed permanently”, she said.
Bertram Stewart, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education had not responded to our questionnaire at the time of compiling this report.
SNAT takes on Government for ordering contract teachers to work without written documentation