KWAZULU-Natal MEC for Education Mthandeni Dlungwane is cracking the whip and has already fired 300 teachers for misconduct and suspended four senior managers since June last year.
He told members of the provincial legislature (MPL) while tabling his budget last week that his intention was to clean up the department.
MPLs had raised concerns about teachers being suspended for years with someone else being paid to do their work, which resulted in double payments and teachers be having improperly at schools.
But Dlungwane responded by saying he was taking action.
“We are cleaning up the department as evidenced by the 300 teachers I have fired since June last year.”
He said there were still problem teachers.
“We are faced with some teachers who continue to abuse our learners both physically and sexually. Between 2016 and 2017, we had a number of such cases.”
Most of the teachers fired, Dlungwane said, were people who should have been axed long ago.
“They were facing many cases… some had improper relations with students, some even have children with students and others were facing cases of financial misconduct.
“Some of these teachers have been sitting at home on suspension and what was missing was for someone to take a decision on them,” he said.
A few months into his appointment, Dlungwane had a baptism of fire when a video which allegedly showed a teacher at a Nquthu school having sex with pupils went viral.
In an interview with The Mercury yesterday, Dlungwane intimated that the future of that teacher with the department was sealed.
“We suspended him immediately and the matter is currently before the courts.
“As the department we have collected all the evidence and finalised that case and we are going through our processes,” he said.
He said they would also be clamping down on financial misconduct and theft at schools.
“We will be sending auditors to audit the schools. We are putting more than R1 billion into the schools’ norms and standards, we cannot simply put in that money and let it go. There is corruption and financial misconduct happening in schools,” he said.
Dlungwane said dismissals and disciplinary action against staff were part of a broader strategy to restore a work ethic and respect for the workplace.
“I have already suspended four senior managers,” he said.
“We cannot have a situation where people come to work and do as they please.”
Meanwhile, the Education Department said it was looking into an incident at a Richards Bay school where a teacher was accused of hitting a pupil.
This comes after a video which shows a teacher allegedly hitting a pupil at the school went viral after being posted on social media last week.
The school’s principal told a local radio station that the alleged assault had happened two weeks ago, but the video was only posted online last week.
Yesterday the Education Department’s Kwazi Mthethwa said: “We have been made aware of an incident of what looks like a teacher assaulting or beating up a learner and the MEC is very angry, and we are very disappointed that 23 years into democracy we still have a teacher who is unable to engage and correct learners in a more decent way,” he said.
Mthethwa said they would be sending a rapid response task team to the school to investigate further.
The department, according to Mthethwa, would also be awaiting a report from the school’s principal and governing body on the incident.
He said that people should not circulate the video.