Close to 300 Gauteng Grade R teachers were not paid for two months, the provincial education department said on Wednesday.
”At present the Department of Education has established that 285 Grade R practitioners did not receive their stipends for March and April 2009,” the department said in a statement.
It said the reason was that their names fell off the system due to wrong bank codes submitted by some of them.
”[Some] bank accounts had been closed by their banking service providers.”
The department said it was capturing the data manually to rectify the problem.
The March stipend was transferred into the accounts of 200 of the 285 teachers but the money was only expected to be in the practitioners’ accounts by Friday.
”Work continues to correct the data on the outstanding 85 practitioners and March payments will be run incrementally as the
data is corrected.”
The department said it would transfer April’s payment on Friday and it would be available in the teacher’s accounts on Wednesday.
The department acknowledged that this was not the first time that this problem had occurred.
”The MEC has instructed the acting head of the department to bring in an outside audit firm to assist to place all these practitioners on persal within the next three months. This will ensure that they are paid regularly and in time.– Sapa