Teacher union Sadtu has vowed to cause chaos in the new year if the provincial department of education continues with its redeployment drive.
Teacher union Sadtu has vowed to cause chaos in the new year if the provincial department of education continues with its redeployment drive.
The union says teachers identified as "excess" in their schools are being moved to posts in other areas short of teachers. This follows teacher cuts announced in the department's post-provisioning for 2014. The Eastern Cape will have 55 796 teacher posts next year compared to 60 820 in 2013.
"We will fight. In fact, we are going to start where we left off," said Sadtu provincial secretary Mncekeleli Ndongeni this week.
He said the Eastern Cape education department was creating chaos as pupils and teachers were being moved around. "We have asked the department if they have the budget for all these relocations; for example if a person is being moved to another area, the department is liable for relocation costs and it turns out they have not budgeted for that," said Ndongeni.
He said the redeployment drive will cause problems again next year.
"This is just another recipe for chaos… they must stop treating teachers like animals," Ndongeni said. "These are professionals. Even animals are treated better than this."
In announcing next year's post-provisioning, MEC Mandla Makupula announced last month that the department would cut 5 024 teaching posts.
Ndongeni said this had been a mistake by the department and that they were trying to solve it by cutting posts elsewhere.
"What we want is for them to employ teachers, because there are no teachers," said Ndongeni.
He also slammed the department's failure to pay temporary teachers since April.
"Who can survive working the whole year without a salary? These teachers even slept outside the head office last week because they want to be paid.
"We don't want to say that the apartheid government was better… but because teachers were paid then, these problems were not there," he said.
Ndongeni said that in the union's fight against redeployment, schools would be disrupted during next year's re-opening.
Meanwhile, commenting on their class action law suit against the Department of Basic Education on behalf of 32 Eastern Cape schools, the Grahamstown-based Legal Resource Centre has noted that there are simultaneously more than 5 000 vacant teacher posts, and that double that number have been identified as "excess".
An online report by eNCA quotes the affidavit accompanying their application: “The continued double employment of temporary teachers and teachers in excess is a massive unsustainable burden on the public purse.
“It is a fruitless and wasteful expenditure which has resulted in disproportionate spending on employee compensation, at the expense of other necessary budget line items such as school infrastructure, textbooks and learner nutrition.”
