Ann Eveleth
KWAZULU-NATAL has been forced to re-employ 230 senior teach- ers, including 60 principals, who had been given hefty retrenchment packages under the state teacher redeployment programme.
The province said this week the teachers have been re-employed at their previous salaries, many until the end of the year, because there were no immediate replacements.
The move conflicts with the national Education Department’s aim to balance state education resources between provinces by redeployment of staff or opening up teaching positions through voluntary severance packages.
Under the policy which has been running since last year, thousands of teachers across South Africa have taken the voluntary severance packages. Many have been senior, experienced staff whose pay- offs, complete with pension, run into seven-figure sums.
Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu said earlier this year the government was reviewing the policy, given the unexpected cost of the packages. National officials were unavailable for comment this week.
Andrew Layman, chairman of Kwa-Zulu-Natal’s education redeployment agency, said 514 principals, 223 deputy principals, 925 heads of department and 1 465 senior teachers had taken the voluntary severance package. The total pay-off bill, before pensions, is estimated at R150-million.
But the provincial department had approved the retention of personnel where no immediate replacements were available: the 60 principals had no deputies to succeed them, Layman said.
The move was described by politicians and unionists this week as a “stop-gap” measure following the “utterly disastrous” effects of the voluntary severance programme.
“We felt the packages should only have been granted in those cases where they facilitated redeployment from historically advantaged to disadvantaged schools,” said Kate Skinner, representative for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu).
“Only those who couldn’t be redeployed were supposed to be offered packages, and school principals and specialists maths and science teachers should have been refused packages.”
Sadtu negotiator Don Pasquiallie said Wednesday’s wage talks walkout by teachers’ unions could also be attributed to the failure of the packages scheme, as most posts it left vacant were not abolished. This had reduced savings intended to augment wage increases.
The Democratic Party’s KwaZulu-Natal education spokesman, MP Roger Burrows, said he understood schools faced with the loss of key personnel could argue to retain them if their posts could not be filled immediately.
“The wider problem it highlights is the loss of our best educators under the scheme. I think many more schools have motivated to retain personnel who have been granted that right by the department.”