Durban -
Thirty teachers and government officials who are at home on paid suspension leave are costing the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department nearly R6 million in salaries and benefits while their disciplinary hearings are being finalised.
One senior official, who has been on paid suspension for more than a year, earns R70 000 a month, according to a report presented to the provincial legislature’s finance committee in Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday.
The misconduct charges brought against the 30 teachers and officials include sexual assault, financial mismanagement and falsifying their qualifications.
A second senior official, who earns R57 000 a month, has been on paid suspension for seven months.
MPLs heard that while the department dealt with disciplinary cases “expeditiously”, employees charged with misconduct postponed their fate by producing sick notes.
In cases where presiding officers had become fed up with the adjournments and opted to proceed in the absence of the errant employees, the Education Labour Relations Bargaining Council had cried foul, or the accused had approached the Labour Court.
In some instances, employees were appealing against their dismissal.
The department’s head of human resources, Bheki Masuku, said it suspended teachers or officials when it was likely that their continued presence at work would interfere with the investigation.
It also emerged that the process of conducting a headcount of all the schoolgoing children in the province had cost the department R2m so far.
In one of KZN’s 12 education districts pupil enrolment figures had been inflated by 17 000.
In the uThungulu district - the only district in which the department had finalised its probe - 286 schools had been investigated for inflating pupil numbers, and 150 principals had been charged.
At a single school, pupil numbers had been exaggerated by 390.
“These schools are defrauding the state,” said Sipho K K Nkosi, the chairman of the finance committee.
DA MPL Francois Rodgers was unimpressed with the lack of detail in the report on the headcount.
Rodgers argued that the department needed to calculate, as soon as possible, the financial implications of having to fork out for meals and teachers for pupils who did not exist.
Nkosi estimated that the department could save at least R100m if it rooted out so-called ghost pupils.
- The government of India recently sacked a civil servant who went on sick leave in 1990 and never came back to work.
It is not clear whether he was paid during his time off.
The Mercury