Madame Speaker, The general strike by public service workers during 2007 in a dispute over pay increases caused major damage to various sectors of South African society, not least the education sector where learners suffered greatly due to absent teachers and classroom disruptions.

Many thousands of teachers went on strike, but there were also many thousands of other teachers who did not go on strike and diligently showed up at their schools willing to teach.

Of course, the no work-no pay rule applied to the strike and the IFP has no problem with that. But, we do have a major problem with the fact that deductions were made from the salaries of teachers who had not gone on strike. Due to administrative incompetence, thousands of teachers suffered unnecessary financial loss putting them in a precarious position.

To add insult to injury, many thousands of teachers are to this day still waiting for the erroneous deductions to be rectified by the Education Department. That this is allowed to continue almost a full year later is indicative of the dismissive attitude of the department to teachers and their contribution to the education of our youth.

Madame Speaker,

The IFP therefore calls on the National Minister of Education to urgently intervene in the provincial departments to ensure that the deductions made from the salaries of teachers who did not participate in last year's strike are immediately returned to those dedicated teachers who have suffered enough.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Ms Sybil Seaton MP
083 412 0075