Polokwane - Office furniture from the late Limpopo Education MEC Thembi Nwedamwutsu’s office will be auctioned off to settle an outstanding R1.4 million debt owed to a group of teachers.
The high court in Pretoria sitting in Polokwane issued a writ of execution (court order) last Thursday against Nwedamwutsu.
The sheriff of the high court obtained the order two days before Nwedamwutsu’s funeral.
“You are hereby directed to attach and take into execution the movable goods… to be realised by public auction to raise the sum of R1 401 907.20 being a payment for outstanding rural allowances in terms of the court order/judgment which was handed on November 6, 2014,” the court document said.
Nwedamutsu’s replacement is yet to be announced.
In November, the high court ordered that the department continue paying rural allowances for the 32 teachers, dating from August 2012.
The high court order was sought after the department had stopped paying the group’s rural allowances.
In August 2012, the department agreed to pay the teachers as part of a settlement agreed in the Polokwane Magistrate’s Court.
Under the settlement agreement, the department paid each teacher R55 305 as part of the allowances owed from January 2008 to July 2012, court papers showed.
“On the basis of the aforementioned settlement agreement, one would have expected that the respondent (department) would have continued to pay the applicants’ (32 teachers) monthly allowances from August 2012 onwards, as long as the applicants are still eligible,” Judge Ephraim Makgoba said in his judgment in November.
He ordered that the department pay the teachers what was owed to them in monthly instalments.
Last week’s order directing the sheriff to attach Nwedamwutsu’s movable property, indicated that the department had not complied with Judge Makgoba’s ruling.
The legal tussle relates to a notice placed in the Government Gazette in December 2007 by former education minister Naledi Pandor, showing that R500 million had been allocated for the 2007/08 financial year to incentivise teachers at remote, poor and no-fee schools countrywide.
Limpopo was allocated R70m for the 2007/08 financial year.
Eligible teachers were to be paid a R1 300 monthly allowance from January 2008, according to court papers.
The government notice showed that the allowance would be adjusted annually based on the consumer price index. But the 32 Limpopo teachers approached the court to argue that they were not being paid despite being eligible. They said their colleagues, some of whom were in the same schools as them, were being paid.
The department’s legal woes look likely to intensify.
More than 1 000 teachers have launched a class action lawsuit to demand that they, too, be paid the rural allowances dating from January 2008. If successful, the lawsuit is likely to cost the department millions of rand.
The department’s application to have the matter moved from the high court to the Labour Court was dismissed by the high court last July.
The subsequent application for leave to appeal against the July ruling was dismissed last month.
The Star