The Democratic Alliance (DA) and some affected education assistants have welcomed the intervention made by Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube to resolve the non-payment of teacher assistants, who have not been paid for months.

On Wednesday, Gwarube, alongside her Department of Labour deputy minister, Jomo Sibiya, jointly addressed the media over non-payment of stipends aimed at helping education assistants.

She indicated that the non-payment of young assistants was due to the failure of officials who were responsible for verifying the attendance registers of thousands of teacher assistants at schools.

“Today, I can confirm that as of 10 am this morning, payments have started flowing from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to our education assistants. This brings a massive relief to thousands of young people who have been waiting for what is due to them. This delay should have never happened, and we will work tirelessly to ensure that it is avoided in the future.”

This is said to have contributed to more than 150 000 assistants at schools around the country not receiving their salaries for months. The assistants, mostly young people, were recently recruited by the Basic Education under its employment initiative.

These assistants, also known as teacher assistants, play a vital role in both elementary and secondary schools.

Gwarube said there should be consequence management to ensure that this does not happen again, stating: “After internal investigation, I have been informed that the captured attendance registers were not uploaded in full by the relevant deadline. This has led to the funder, namely the UIF [Unemployment Insurance Fund], being unable to approve the release of the stipend funds. When the system failed, contingency plans were not activated by responsible departmental officials.”

Nazley Sharif, DA spokesperson on basic education, commended the minister for acting swiftly in resolving the recent delays in stipend payments to the young people employed under the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI).

“After several days of administrative hold-ups, Minister Gwarube worked closely with the Departments of Employment and Labour, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to ensure that funds were released without further delay. As a result, payments began flowing to beneficiaries this morning, bringing much-needed relief to thousands of young people who depend on these stipends to support themselves and their families,” said Sharif.

“We are grateful that after many weeks of not being paid, we are now going to be paid our allowances. The situation was starting to get frustrating. We had been living on borrowed money from people since the start of the challenges to our payments,” said Sindiswa Zulu from Soweto.

siyabonga.sithole@inl.co.za

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