Mbabane: The Swaziland National Teachers Association (SNAT) has unhesitatingly said it will incite its members to stay at home and not heed government’s directive to return to school next Monday, if the latter will not agree on paying the teachers the Risk Allowance, in addition to overtime paid for working on holidays and Saturdays.
SNAT’s Secretary General, Sikelela Dlamini, said they would fail teachers if they vouched for their return to classes without bringing forward the need for compensation while engaged in the hazardous duties which come with the Covid-19 outbreak. Dlamini said in fact, government owed teachers overtime money due to work done outside of the working days, long before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The SG said the Risk Allowance will inspire the teachers to return to classes, knowing that it will not be in vain since they will be paid. By law, workers are supposes to remove themselves from any plan that poses danger without compensation, said the SG.
“If the Risk Allowance is not implemented then as a Union we will have no option but to tell our members to desist from returning to the schools,” said the SG. Currently, they are engaged with the Joint Negotiation Forum (JNF) where they have put through their grievances, afterwhich, the Government Negotiating Team (GNT) will report to their principals, said Dlamini. He said they were going to calculate the allowances once government was willing to engage them.
He said, however, he will make a follow up through a letter to the Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Education and Training.
Drawn for comment, Education PS, Bertram Steward, said they do not have a recognition agreement with the teachers, and by the time of publication they hadn’t received any letter from the teachers’ association. He said he would remind teachers that they had stayed at home for an extraordinarily extended period of time while drawing government salary. Steward said in fact, when talking about classes resumption he was referring to teachers and not their association, adding that as a ministry they have always engaged the association in closed meetings. “It baffles me why the association finds it easy to talk to the media first before us on issues pertaining to the ministry and schools,” said Steward.
Tabling the Covid-19 Response Draft in the House of Assembly on Monday, education minister, Lady Howard-Mabuza said using the remaining school days, holidays and some Saturdays, would contribute to more teaching or learning time recovery of lost time.
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