Mbombela – Operations at some schools in KwaMhlanga in Mpumalanga have been disrupted as hundreds of members of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) have taken to picketing in protest against what it called government job cuts.
Sadtu Mpumalanga provincial secretary, Walter Hlaise, said that the pickets started on Monday throughout the province.
He said the bone of contention was that the provincial department of Education had started “cutting 1 400 teaching jobs” by freezing vacant posts.
“We are saying they must unfreeze these posts,” said Hlaise.
Hlaise said the union was also against what he called the occasional transfer of officials from the department’s head office to other structures in the districts to fill vacant posts in various capacities.
“The department must stop transferring officials and advertise the posts that become vacant. I am in Komatipoort [about 100 km from Mbombela] now as we speak where we are also picketing. The pickets will end next week Friday and we will march to the provincial department on 29 September to hand over a memorandum of grievances.”
The picket in KwaMhlanga started at about 11am on Tuesday when about 300 people clad in Sadtu-branded clothes, gathered outside the government complex. They sang struggle songs, danced and later walked to the KwaMhlanga campus of the Tshwane University of Technology, about 800 metres away.
Hlaise insisted that teaching was not affected in schools, saying most of the people who took part in the labour action were Sadtu shop stewards.
He said arrangements were made that each and every school must be represented by one teacher. But several pupils wearing school uniform were seen walking to their homes in other streets of KwaMhlanga at about 11am, while the picketing was in progress. It also appeared as if there were no pupils inside the classes at KwaMhlanga High School at the time.
Five pupils who claimed to be from Musi Primary School in section B of KwaMhlanga told ANA most of their teachers left the school at about 10am and joined the picket. They said they had decided to go home and were worried about the disruption as it could affect their preparations for their end-of-year exams.
“We don’t even know what is happening because our teachers did not tell us where they were going,” said one grade nine pupil.
A grade eight pupil said: “I hope whatever it is that made our teachers gather there will be resolved so that they can came back to our school tomorrow.”
Most Sadtu members who were picketing declined to comment.
African News Agency