GOOD NEWS FOR TEACHERS

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.

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