AT LEAST 30 TEACHERS’ SALARIES STAND TO BE FROZEN

MBABANE – About 30 teachers stand to have their salaries frozen for failure to show up at the Ministry of Education and Training yesterday. This follows a downsizing exercise undertaken by the ministry, whose findings pointed out that 105 teachers were not at their duty stations and government could be paying ghost employees. The teachers were requested by the Ministry of Education and Training Under Secretary, Lungelo Nhlengetfwa, to come to the ministry so that the necessary corrections could be made on the irregularities concerning their duty stations, and only 75 showed up.

Nhlengetfwa said the 30 teachers who failed to show up at the ministry yesterday, will have their salaries frozen. However, those who failed to show up would still be attended to if they did today. Some of the interviewed teachers at the ministry revealed that the irregularities in their posts were caused by the employer’s failure to put on record their transfers, among other things.

Transferred

One teacher from a school in the Shiselweni Region shared that multiple teachers had been transferred from their initial posts, but the system at the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) reflected that they were still at the initial duty station, despite being moved.  “If the TSC does not put on their records that a teacher has been transferred from one school to another, there is bound to be irregularities. I can confidently tell you that a majority of the teachers, who were purportedly away without official leave, report for duty every day and it comes down to the issue I’ve just shared,” he said.

Another teacher submitted that only a small number of the 105 teachers had left the country to find greener pastures beyond the country’s borders, without following all the required steps to be exited from government’s system. He echoed his colleague in that the employer was not hands-on in terms of promptly recording the transfers to avoid any anomalies. The Swaziland Association of Schools Administrators Secretary General, Gciningcebo Thusi, said the irregularities are caused by multiple factors, including that the employer some resigned or retired teachers exited the government system, but the posts remained.

He explained that these posts were sometimes given to other teachers but they still carried the name of the resigned or retired teacher. Another irregularity that Thusi brought to the fore was that some teachers were going beyond the country’s borders, but they skipped the required processes to be exited from the government system, hence the anomalies. It should be mentioned that Nhlengetfwa was cognisant that some of the teachers might be in the Republic of China (Taiwan) for greener pastures.

This is where some of the local teachers have migrated to for greener pastures, as alluded to by some of their interviewed colleagues yesterday. Going forward, Nhlengetfwa said they will be doing a lot of inspections that seek to determine whether the teachers were indeed at their duty stations, an exercise that was compromised by the lack of vehicles at the ministry. He said now that vehicles were available, they would be frequently engaging in the exercise. 

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