The Department of Education (DoE) has said all the schools that have unpaid substitute teachers, are tasked to figure out how they will pay them.
According to spokesperson for education, Jasper Zwane, the DoE did not hand out appointment letters to any of the substitute educators.
“The appointments were not approved by the department. We were still in discussions and considering appointing them, however, we then moved to level 1 of lockdown.
This meant that the permanent teachers were going to return. Every employer is supposed to be approved, after which they receive a letter of appointment, but this was not the case in this matter.
“We issued circulars explaining how the process will work just in case we might need to appoint more teachers. There was no need for us to appoint more staff, since in most cases some schools had only one class and about 30 teachers. This meant that about 23 teachers were not doing anything. In one case, there was a school that had 13 substitute teachers. We then do not understand what the other educators in that school were doing,” said Zwane.
About 220 teachers have not been paid. They said they temporarily worked after some full-time staff members were granted comorbidity concessions. Zwane said they have communicated with all the schools affected and are currently resolving the matter. According to these educators, for the past few months they dedicated themselves and performed their duties since they believed they had been temporarily employed. They said their situations changed when they started raising concerns regarding when they would receive their salaries.
According to one of the teachers who chose to remain anonymous, they do not understand how this is possible.
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These substitute educators are in possession of a circular. It is titled “Human Resource Management Directive No 23 of 2020, Appointment of Covid-19 part-time substitute teachers for school-based educators who applied for concession due to comorbidities”.
Walter Hlayise, provincial secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, said the Mpumalanga branch has intervened in the matter.
“We are holding ongoing discussions with the department and are quite optimistic that it will be positively resolved before end of the month. The discussions we have had with the DoE are positive and quite encouraging,” he said.
