ANC loots electricity for its birthday celebrations – mayor of Kgatelopele must pay up
Northern Cape Provincial Legislature
Allen Grootboom, Mpl
Cell: 071 682 6806
11 March 2013
A crises of accountability by Department and union
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will be submitting parliamentary questions to the Northern Cape Department of Education, to ascertain whether any measures have been taken to protect programmes currently threatened with disruptions by the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU).
This is in response to recent media reports in which SADTU provincial secretary, Sipho Mayongo, indicated the union would be embarking on mass rolling action, over and above their current campaign to “frustrate the Northern Cape Department of Education”. According to SADTU, their campaign has been to require its members to refuse to participate in programmes which are outside of the seven daily work hours they are employed for.
The tragic irony is that SADTU’s campaign does not hurt the Department of Education more than it does the learners caught in the middle of its fight with the national Minister of Education, Angie Motshekga.
Once again it is the poor learners in the province who must bear the consequences of political office bearers or their politically aligned union allies wrangling, and a general lack of accountability from both union leaders and the ANC government.
The lack of accountability has already affected the access to and quality of education in the province. With this in mind, SADTU must be held accountable on delivery of their key mandate, which is the education of our learners. If they do not like the face of the Minister or the Director-General, why should the learners suffer? Perhaps in borrowing from their own rhetoric, the DA believes that the definition of “counter-revolutionary” should be that obstructive unionism and politics which revert us to gutter education standards is counter-revolutionary. What will SADTU tell the parents of neglected the learners they neglect their duty to educate? Education is much more than
The DA believes the right to education is more than just having a teacher stand in front of a class, and thus is calling on both SADTU and the Education Department to deal with their differences in the boardroom, and to not place the future of our learners at risk.
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