By Rachel Mohamed
The Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) plan to cut more than 2,000 teaching positions for the upcoming school year has been rejected by the Democratic Teachers Union of South Africa (SADTU).
Speaking on VOC Breakfast show on Tuesday, the Sadtu Provincial Secretary Sibongile Kwazi said the union has rejected the call to downgrade the education of the poor working class in the Western Cape.
According to Kwazi, the department needs to come up with suggestions on how best to address the issue of cutting teaching posts.
“Let me declare that we are aware that there are budget cuts because they were a workshop organized by the Education Labour Relations Council to oversee how we can address this challenge of budget cuts.”
“The problem we have experienced is that the Western Cape is the only province that decided to cut the posts of teachers when addressing the austerity measures,” said Kwazi.
She further highlighted the union came up with a few suggestions that could save some of the teaching posts but unfortunately, “There was no political will from the employer to try and look into the suggestion we raised with them. We believe there are other ways we could freeze these posts.”
“One of the ways we could save money is the Back on Track program to try and address the learning losses experienced during the COVID period in 2020,” concluded Kwazi.
Listen to the full interview below:
VOC News
Photo: VOCfm
