THERESA TAYLOR

THE PRINCIPAL at her school labelled Lauren Reeding a “tremendous blessing” in a letter to the Gauteng Department of Education.

But this Grade 1 teacher has not received a salary since December and says she has been warned not to expect to be paid at the end of this month.

“I’m good enough to teach, but I’m not good enough to get paid,” she says.

She had asked to be transferred from a school in the Western Cape to be closer to her husband in Gauteng and began work at Alra Park Primary School, in Nigel, in January.

“I used my December salary for relocation costs, so I was really depending on January’s pay,” Reeding says.

But at the end of last month, she was told that her transfer had not yet been processed and she would not be paid for the month.

Reeding is anxious because medical aid and other monthly expenses have not been taken care of.

She has an autistic six-year-old son who has development difficulties and needs special care such as nappies that cost as much as R250 for 40.

“They have no right to not pay me,” she says. “They don’t know what personal expenses I have.”

Four trips to the department office in Springs appear to have yielded little results. Reeding says staff have been unprofessional, neglecting her queries to answer personal SMSes and sending her back and forth.

She was told that she had not filled in salary forms. But she says she completed these on her arrival at the school and was being required to do them again.

“Then the principal called me in last week to say that I wasn’t getting paid for February… the man who had my forms at the department had not processed them,” she says.

Reeding says she became a teacher because she has a lot of patience with young children.

“I’m more than happy to show them the ropes and give them a solid foundation for life.”

But with 48 children in her class and money worries at home, she has been finding it hard to stay motivated.

Department spokesman Charles Phahlane says Reeding had not been paid because “her transfer was only approved and effected from February 1, 2012”.

But a letter from Reeding’s former principal, dated December 13 last year, states clearly that she will be transferred to the Gauteng Department of Education from January 1, 2012.

Phahlane says Reeding will receive her salary at the end of this month, but whether she will be paid for both months remains unclear.