AT least 72 teachers who stood in for those who were on leave between 2017 and this year say they have still not been paid.
The teachers this week petitioned Education Minister Professor Ntoi Rapapa to intervene after several attempts to secure payment failed.
They told thepost this week that they had been engaging the Teaching Service Department (TSD) to pay but all their efforts have come to naught.
The teachers, who have formed a WhatsApp group, wrote to Professor Rapapa last month asking him to help them in their bid to get their salaries.
The teachers were employed on a temporary basis between 2017 and this year.
In the letter seen by thepost, the teachers said they expected to receive their salaries after three months but that process has now taken years.
They also claimed that some of their documents which they had submitted to the TSD for processing were either misplaced or they simply disappeared.
“Documents are kept for a long time at the accounts and registry offices unattended,” the letter reads.
The teachers said when they approach the relevant offices in the ministry to seek answers, they are usually sent away.
“We are suffering here,” the teachers said.
With the Christmas season fast approaching, the teachers said they are wondering if they will receive their money before the holidays.
The TSD spokesman, Lesoma Katisi, said the Ministry of Education’s budget “keeps on decreasing almost every financial year”.
“The problem is that these teachers are not on our payroll as the ministry,” Katisi said.
“This means we do not have a specific budget for them,” he added.
To pay these teachers, he said, they have to solicit funds elsewhere.
“These teachers only come to do part time jobs,” Katisi said.
Another thorny issue is that they get the money to settle teachers’ arrears at the end of each financial year, not at the beginning.
“This is because we have to ask for the funds bearing in mind how many teachers we have to pay,” Katisi said.
He said the delayed payments came to the teachers as arrears and not as salaries.
He said the low budget allocation means that the ministry is not able to cater for the teachers who have to be paid their dues.
What they do as the TSD, he said, is the paperwork that they send to the Ministry of Finance to pay the teachers.
In her budget speech for this Financial Year 2023/24, Finance Minister Dr Retšelisitsoe Matlanyane said all the arrears of teachers in this current year should be taken to her ministry.
Majara Molupe