The education department does not have the money to implement an Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD) despite having signed an agreement with trade unions, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said on Friday.
”… The pace of implementation will be determined by the availability of funds,” she said.
”Whether we find it today or next year, we still owe. The sooner we find the money, the better for us,” she told the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) national general council in Benoni.
The government and unions reached the agreement on OSD this week, a move hailed by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and Sadtu. Unions secured a double-digit wage increase for public servants.
Motshekga said that when government signed the resolution, it made it known that it did not have the funds to implement it immediately.
It went back to provinces to see if it could secure funding and managed to identify almost R3-billion.
However, provinces were in debt amounting to R2,7-billion, so the money identified could not be used for the wage deal.
Motshekga said the government was looking into the matter.
Earlier this week, Motshekga praised unions for signing the 2009/2010 wage agreement.
The agreement binds workers and the education department to a general salary adjustment of between 13% and 10% for the financial year, backdated to July 1.
Expressing concern about the government’s lack of money to implement the deal, newly elected Sadtu general secretary Mokoena Maluleke said the union was waiting to formally meet with the government for feedback on the funding problem. — Sapa