KwaZulu-Natal Treasury MEC Ravi Pillay has said the provincial government is confident it can find common ground with teachers’ unions who have called on their members not to return to school.
Pillay – who was inspecting Unobhala High School in Enkanyezini, Mkhambathini, on Thursday – said while the government respected the view of organised labour, it did not have to agree with it.
“In keeping with our tradition as a country and majority progressive movement to which we belong, I am confident engagements will be robust and we will find each other with a solution we can live with.”
Education MEC Kwazi Mshengu and the education department is currently scrambling to prepare for the reopening of schools under Level 3 lockdown, but unions have instructed teachers to stay at home, citing an alleged lack of preparedness from the government.
Grades 7 and 12 pupils are set to begin the phasing in of students at schools from Monday.
On Wednesday, the department came under fire from Sadtu as well as union heavyweights the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa, National Teachers Union, SA Teachers Union and Professional Educators Union after they declared KwaZulu-Natal was unfit to reopen schools during the Covid-19 pandemic
Mshengu was absent from the engagement on Thursday after he became a father to a baby boy.
Source: https://www.news24.com/
