The Gauteng department of education has appointed an auditing firm to ensure sure all of its employees are on the Persal system, used for administering salaries, after it emerged that more than 200 grade R teachers have not been paid for two months.
The department has assured the 285 educators who have not received their stipends for March and April that they are working to rectify the problem and their March stipends should be in their accounts by Friday.
Departmental spokesperson Nanagola Leopeng says the educators did not receive their stipends because their names fell of the system, either due to incorrect branch codes being submitted for their bank accounts or bank accounts had been closed by their banking service providers.
Leopeng says department officials are now entering the details of the affected teacher’s manually, and it is expected that the teachers would have their stipend for both months by May 27.
This is the latest incident of non-payment of salaries to emerge from the department after it came to light earlier this month that more than 1000 teachers had not received their salaries for April.
To ensure that no other practitioners face similar, but unreported payment delays, the department is phoning all ECD sites to verify the banking details of all 2700 early childhood development practitioners.