SELBY MAKGOTHO reports
MORE than 1 500 unemployed teachers are threatening to disrupt classes and picket government offices in Bushbuckridge at the end of the month to force the Northern Province to hire them.
They accuse the province of breaking a promise to employ them in special matric ‘finishing centres’. Some of the protestors were employed at these centres, when they operated for two years in the late 1990s.
The idea was to provide year-long tuition for pupils who failed matric twice, provided they paid normal school fees.
The leader of the new Bushbuckridge Unemployed Teachers’ Organisation (Buto), Elly Mokoena, said this week politicians repeatedly made promises to unemployed teachers during the run-up to last year’s elections. “When they wanted our votes, they promised to create jobs for all. But after getting our votes, they turned their backs on us and said there was no money. Government will probably promise us all jobs again when the next round of elections comes in 2004. We don’t want promises – we want jobs,” said Mokoena.
Mokoena said the Northern Province education department ignored repeated requests to re-establish the centres, in an attempt to improve the province’s 1999 matric pass rate of 37,55%. “We met education MEC Edgar Mushwana last November, but he just kept saying there was no money to reopen the centres, or to hire us in other capacities. This attitude is making everyone suffer, because now we don’t have jobs and the Northern Province again has the lowest matric pass rate in the country,” said Mokoena.
Mokoena also criticised the province’s redeployment programme, saying teachers should be drawn from the communities they were expected to serve, instead of being transferred from schools in other districts. The programme aims to transfer surplus or specialist teachers to needy schools.
Education spokesman Rapule Matsane said on Monday the province did not have the funds to hire new teachers, and could not create new posts for Buto members. “We have to exercise extreme fiscal discipline and are sticking to our redeployment programme, which will address current resource shortages at rural and township schools without bloating the civil service any further,” he said. “The unemployed should rather start looking at alternative employment, or at starting their own business ventures if they really want to build this country.” The picket is planned for February 25.
— African Eye News Service, February 15, 2000.