Staff told to give pay back

A South Waikato principal was left stressed, frustrated and feeling unsupported after the Novopay debacle continued last week.

The errors forced some schools this week to pay staff to work extra hours to deal with the problems, which were complicated and varied.

Some staff were underpaid; while others were overpaid.

A national survey of principals, conducted by New Zealand Principals Association, showed 97.2 per cent of those questioned were not confident their staff would be paid correctly by the end of the school year because of ongoing problems with Novopay, which has logged 8000 errors since it was introduced in August.

Cargill Open Plan School in Tokoroa was one of the schools affected and, while its issues are mild compared with others, Novopay’s errors are still felt.

‘‘I knew there was a problem from the last pay [two weeks prior],’’ principal Rhonda Rayner said.

‘‘The last pay, we had people who weren’t entitled to be paid being paid. This pay, we had people who were entitled to be getting pay, not getting paid their weekly hours and holiday pay.’’

Once Mrs Rayner discovered the errors, she contacted Novopay advising them of the situation. However, her concerns were not entirely heard.

‘‘What happened is that we got this report which told us what pay was going out. Nancy [ Flavall, office administrator] and I went through it and it was like, ‘ Holy hell, this isn’t right’.

‘‘We rang Novopay to stop some pay from going through and we rang them to organise someone getting paid annual holiday pay. But also, as a consequence of that, I had to ring the two members who shouldn’t have been paid that money will appear in their account and that they will need to pay it back.

‘‘Those are not nice conversations to have with people. Then I had to tell the person that they haven’t been paid for two weeks and holiday pay.’’

She added that three people were affected – but more possibly.

‘‘We are not sure about the holiday pay,’’ she said.

Meanwhile, one error was corrected.

‘‘Our issues are nothing compared with other schools [ around the country],’’ Mrs Rayner said. Rhonda Rayner

Principal Between October 24 and November 30 there were a total of 85 dogs impounded. Of those, 44 have been euthanised, 22 have been claimed and three rehomed. Leaving 16 still in the pound. There were also six dog attacks, six cases of reported aggressive behaviour over the reporting period. In the last month there were six reported cases of infectious diseases in the South Waikato. There were individual cases of campylobacteriosis, giardiasis, yersiniosis and three cases of cryptosporidiosis. Forest View High School student Danni-Jane Umaki was selected for the New Zealand Talent Identification Programme for netball recently. The defence player found about her selection one month ago and said, ‘‘It is just like a programme that is training us towards a training camp and from there they will select for New Zealand Secondary Schools National Squad.’’ Dates for the training have not been finalised, but Danni-Jane said it will be held around the beginning of next year The Putaruru Squash Rackets Club was approved a loan of $12,000 from South Waikato District Council last week. The loan request was approved during the council’s Corporate and Environment Committee meeting. The funding will be used to complete work undertaken on the ladies’ change room.