Times Of Swaziland: GOOD NEWS FOR TEACHERS

GOOD NEWS FOR TEACHERS
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BY ZWELIHLE SUKATI on 08/03/2014 02:39:00


MBABANE – In an effort to address the challenges faced by head teachers and
teachers who are assigned to schools situated in remote areas government,
through the Ministry of Education and Training, is willing to meet them halfway.
The Ministry of Education Principal Secretary, Pat Muir, said government was
committed to working on giving head teachers and teachers’ hardship allowances
in recognition of some of the dire challenges they endure at the various
workstations.
Muir said as a ministry they have always advocated for hardship allowances for
those teachers working under harsh conditions in certain schools.
“There are schools that are very remote and I am hoping, because there is an
organisation that represents teachers’ interests in terms of conditions of
service, this will ultimately be raised in the correct platform. We have always
advocated for hardship allowances.
“I have visited schools where there is no public transport from the main road
to the institution which is at quite a distance,” said Muir while making an
example of one school at Mahlangatsha.
“I hope this issue of hardship allowances is going to address, somehow, the
issue of such hardships. This is recognition of working under that particular
school’s condition and its inaccessibility,” he said.
Muir stated that other schools have been faced with many challenges such a
non-ending water crisis.
It could not be immediately ascertained how much the hardship allowances, should
this become a reality, would be and how it would be calculated.
Adding he said the ministry was working on the decentralisation of the Teaching
Service Commission (TSC).
Currently the TSC offices are situated at the ministry’s headquarters in
Mbabane and teachers have, in the past ,complained that they have to travel the
whole day to get to the TSC offices only to be turned back.
They complained that this was a cost to them as they cater for the travelling
expenses from their own pockets.
Further, they argued that when they do travel, a day is wasted as the pupils go
the whole day having not learnt anything, due to the teacher’s absence.
“We hope those issues that make teachers travel from distant areas to Mbabane,
where there is no parking, walk up the long stairs as lifts do not function
well, will be addressed at regional level where TSC will be represented,” Muir
said.