June 8 reopening unlikely – unions
ALMOST a day after the Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced that her department was working hard to ensure schools are ready to open next week Monday, three teacher unions have poured cold water over the plan, saying it is simply impossible.
One of the unions, the National Teachers Union (Natu), said even if schools are ready to reopen they would not encourage their members to report for duty, setting the stage for another stand-off between them and their employer.
The union’s president, Alan Thompson, said what also worried them was that the department was engaging with unions in bad faith by announcing dates without consulting them.
“If you look at the work that has been done it is so little, such that the 3 500 tanks that should have been installed and water delivered, none of those school has received a tank… That is why we believe they will not be ready.
“There is another approach they have adopted, the approach of dumping chemicals in schools, and we are saying dumping of chemicals does not make you ready to reopen because the principals of those schools don’t even know what those chemicals are for,” Thompson said.
He accused the department of forcing teachers who are over 60 and those with comorbidities to return to schools where they would be vulnerable to Covid-19.
SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) general secretary Mgwena Maluleke said it will take a miracle to get the work done within the few remaining days.
“If from April until the end of May we were not able to deliver 80% of the work, and some other provinces are sitting at 55%, it will take a miracle to get that school to deliver the 45% and get ready in seven days,” he said, adding that only cutting corners will help the department meet its targets.
In response to the announcement that schools may not be ready by next week, National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) president Basil Manuel said the reason the department was struggling was that it had started preparations very late.
“The department never looked beyond the immediate closing of schools; I think many officials thought they were locking up buildings and when the lockdown was over they were going to reopen them.
“They did not think for a minute that this virus is going to be around for a long time, and when they heard it was going to be around for a long time they did not jump into gear, they waited until the last minute” he said.
Addressing the media yesterday about the decision to temporarily halt the reopening of schools to cater for Grade 7 and Grade 12 learners, Motshekga said the blame for the delay in providing the personal protective equipment for learners and teachers lay with some service providers who misled them about their capabilities.
Other challenges encountered included having local business people demanding to be given contracts to provide the equipment.
Education director-general Mathanzima Mweli said the trouble got worse when a JSE-listed logistics company which got the contract to move around the equipment became overwhelmed.
“Initially, the whole government procured through only one supplier... for the whole of government.
“And increasingly... it could not carry successfully the burden of procuring most of these Covid-19 essentials from overseas, and then the provinces were then told after about two weeks or so to cancel and reorder, which caused delays of about three weeks to procure afresh,” Mweli said.
KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and Limpopo were some of the provinces deemed lagging behind.