Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) has stated that teachers will not report for work when schools open on January 17 unless government hired more teachers.
According to the organisation, there were over 4 000 vacancies for teachers in both primary and high schools in the country.
SNAT Secretary General, Lot Vilakati, said government’s hiring freeze had created a gap, which remained unfilled.
Vilakati said it was also of great concern that government relied on temporary teachers as opposed to hiring them on permanent basis.
He said there were many issues in the teaching profession, which called for the SNAT National Executive Committee (NEC) to convene a three-day meeting, which starts tomorrow and ends on Friday.
The meeting, according to Vilakati would adopt a number of strategies with which they would mount a plan of action they would implement to restore the profession to be a respected one.
“It will be clear that unless government hires teachers permanently, we will not open schools,” he stated.
Vilakati said with government giving a greenlight to the introduction of Grade Zero, it would surge the new posts in schools which need filling.
Further, he said other posts in primary, secondary, heads of department, head teachers, inspectors and lecturers needed had been abandoned.
He said the plight of un-hired qualified teachers was evident at Hosea Inkhundla, where two newly-built schools were allegedly without teachers.
It was reported that the schools might not open as there were no teachers deployed by the Teaching Service Commission (TSC).
Vilakati said the SNAT NEC would prioritise the issue of contract teachers, which was something they no longer desired and accused government of using contract teachers as a strategy to union-bash the organisation.
Adding, he said this was union-bashing because contract teachers, as well as those who were retired were SNAT members and were classified as associate members as they were not active.
He said they assume membership by virtue of the profession they were in from the point of being students training to be teachers.
He said they had noted that these members usually fail to keep up with their subscriptions.
Membership gets cancelled after six months of inactivity, Vilakati said, adding that this was because they failed to subscribe when their contracts ended.
He said as a result this resulted in SNAT membership dropping from 15 000 to 11 000 in the past years.
Vilakati also highlighted other issues to be directed for the attention of the TSC and the Ministry of Education and Training.
These included still unpaid Free Primary Education (FPE) and Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) grants.
urgently
He also said another expectation they wanted government to urgently address was to make sure all funds owed from last year were paid to schools.
Another issue he highlighted was that government had stretched the teacher-pupils ratio by a third.
Narrating, he said while the normally expected ratio was one teacher to 25 pupils, teachers were now handling classes of 80 pupils in some schools.
This he said was because government did not invest anymore to education infrastructure.
“Government doesn’t want to sort infrastructure.
While they are implementing FPE, the number of schools still remain low to incapacitate the education for all,” he said.
Vilakati further reiterated that they would not report at their duty stations when school open.
However, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Training, Bhekithemba Gama, said the ministry expects all teachers to be at their duty stations when schools opened.
Gama said government would open schools on January 17.
He minced no words that measures would be taken against those who would rebel.
“As the ministry we expect that from January 17, all teachers must report to work. If a teacher fails to show up, we will effect the no-work no-pay policy,” he said in a responding interview.
Meanwhile, Gama said they expected an invitation from SNAT for engagement with their proposed plan.
In its second quarter performance report, the ministry stated that only 170 permanent posts had been filled.
These, the ministry said, included positions for teachers and administrative posts in schools.
The ministry further stated that 10 head teachers were recruited for new schools and one vocational training centre and that it had spent E62 million capital budget for the implementation of various projects, mostly to the Micro Project Unit.
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