Durban – A number of KwaZulu-Natal Grade R teachers still have not received their 2016 salary adjustments, says the National Teachers’ Union (Natu).
They were supposed to be paid a lump sum, backdated to April 2016 – last Monday but the union’s deputy president, Allen Thompson, said on Sunday that some had not yet received “a single cent”.
“Others received only R1640, while some received R3690,” Thompson said, speaking at a press conference in Durban.
But the provincial education department denied the allegations and said on Sunday that “99.9%” of teachers had been paid.
Last week, the union said it was unhappy with the R500 a month salary adjustments, which it said were insulting and decided upon without consultation with the unions.
Thompson said on Sunday that they had a meeting with the department, during which the latter claimed to have “no obligation to negotiate with the unions on how much these educators must be paid."
“Natu informed the MEC and his officials that we needed more information on their grounds for awarding the R500 salary adjustments,” he said.
He said once the union was in possession of this information, it would decide the way forward.
The union ultimately wants the province’s Grade R teachers’ absorbed into the mainstream education system and for their pay to be structured the same way as other teachers’ pay.
In the meantime, it wants their salaries increased from R6 000 to R10 000 a month.
Education head of department Dr Enoch Nzama on Sunday dismissed Natu’s claims that Grade R teachers had not been paid, or had not been paid in full.
“We paid all of them last Monday,” he said. “There might be one or two that we missed because we do not have their personal details or they are foreigners but 99.9% were paid”.
Speaking about their salaries more generally and Natu’s unhappiness with the amount Grade R teachers were being paid, Nzama pointed out that the country’s highest paid Grade R teachers were in Gauteng and the Western Cape, where they received R7000 – just R1000 more than they did in KwaZulu-Natal.