Durban - Over 100 unemployed qualified teachers have gathered at Freedom Square in Pietermaritzburg clad in their graduation regalia preparing to march to the offices of the Department of Education.
The frustrated teachers are marching over the online process of recruiting entry level teachers calling for it to be scrapped.
In February last year the department launched its KZN Qualified Educators App which has been problematic for users.
Previously the Daily News reported that the department had not anticipated such a high number of applicants when it sealed the deal to develop the app with Quality Designs (Pty) LTD.
This then rendered the app dysfunctional and while the department attended to this a Web version was available as an alternative measure which had all the features available on the mobile version that candidates were re-directed to make use of it in the meantime.
The group of marching teachers calling themselves the KZN Unemployed Qualified Educators (KZNUQE) wants the department while it ensured that the online processes were running smoothly revert back to have level one posts advertised in bulletins like the others.
According to the KZNUQE they still struggled to register or login in the alternative Web Portal version.
The department completed its process fixing the App on 12 March.
While the app was running it was said that supporting documents that had been previously uploaded by candidates were no longer there.
KZNUQE spokesperson Mlekeleli Radebe said the alternate web portal had not been fully functional and added they had found that first time users were unable to register on it.
“It favours existing candidates who are also unable to view their documents that they have uploaded in the KZNUQE. It does not save what has been edited in the candidate's profile while there are missing documents too. It denies the candidate's password and provides no option for retrieval of forgotten password. There is no block for specialist educators and some learning areas do not appear such as Natural Sciences. Some candidates are unable to login,” Radebe said.
Marching teachers have their CVs in hand and expect 50% of these to be accepted by human resources at the department's office when they hand over their memorandum.
Daily News