Comrades,

Compliments of the new year. Let us take this opportunity to welcome you in 2010 before the actual date of office reopening. We do this because we have been busy throughout the holidays monitoring and assessing the process of OSD implementation. We continuously sent queries to the DOE as we receive them and the DOE had closed office since 18th and only resumed business yesterday. We were also monitoring the marking process including irregularities during the examinations for Matric.

On the latter therefore we can report as follows:

1. Irregularities were indeed noted during the examination period and Mpumalanga became the focus as five papers were leaked during the final stages of preparing papers. This means papers were leaked after corrections were effected into the exam papers. A computer that was used for capturing the papers was left unsecured and had access to at least 20 persons. Department suspend Mr Naidoo and investigations traced the leakage to private examination centres, Official’s son and a teacher. Obviously papers were sold for R150.00  and it is a syndicate in the department assisted by those who want to embarrass the ANC in the province. The situation of Mpumalanga needs serious attention because this is recurring and it has therefore become a norm that results will be delayed or inflated. The department is failing and this calls for an independent commission of enquiry into the nature of employment in the department to establish if people are not employed on the basis of jobs for pals and to further corruption.
2. On certification of Matric results, Umalusi has certified the results from the 8 provinces except Mpumalanga.  A brief report on standardisation is attached.
3. On the press statement, we have not received the embargoed results as yet and will only receive them by 17H00 tomorrow, Wednesday and only then can we be able to prepare our embargoed statement after we shall have analysed them. Once we have prepared it we shall email it to all the provinces and regions as embargoed so that we protect the integrity of the National Examinations. 

On the OSD:
One took the opportunity to arrange a quick informal meeting with Simone’ Geyer to get feedback on the queries the DOE received and what action was taken to correct the situation.

The following came through in that encounter:

DOE has received an exception report from PERSAL and immediately sent same to Provincial Departments for action. She gave few examples of exceptions where PERSAL couldn’t pay in full.
The examples are: This happened as PERSAL put safety measures to avoid overpayments as it happened during Health OSD and the OSD 1 for educators(4% - 9%) translation.
1.  MMS category: where this category of educators PERSAL detected the date of promotion as date of appointment. Action taken is that all provinces by yesterday were correcting the dates and such will be submitted to PERSAL for programmatic payment.
2. Ordinary promotion: In some instances and for some provinces and in particular those provinces with poor administration, PERSAL paid from the date of promotion and not the actual date of appointment. Action taken: Provinces requested to verify dates of appointment and submit to DOE national for PERSAL to pay programmatically.
3. Break in service and date of appointment not correctly captured: Shortfall experienced. Action required: Provinces to provide proof from file manually so that programmatic payment can be effected.
4. Persons appointed prior to 1992 or 1994 etc: Again this has affected educators from poor administered provinces. Action required: Manual verification from files by provinces

The other feedback from queries was that members expected tens of thousands and this was a result of members not getting education on the signed agreement. The other educational issues are educators who are currently on Snr and Master teachers querying non-payment.  The agreement states the those who would qualified as this category was abolished in 2007 OSD. Thanks to SADTU for having negotiated for a compensation of 3% once off for those educators. Branches must take it upon themselves to workshop Site Stewards on the agreement or else we are going to have a lot of unnecessary queries.

Department more than willing to assist in workshopping FTSS on the agreement.

The following are going to be done by the DOE:

• Conducting an urgent meeting with all Directors in HR on the agreement by the 8th
• Developing a pamphlet with examples on ROE and 3% PP for distribution by Friday or weekend so that it assist in explaining paragraph by paragraph of the agreement
• Send a letter by the 5th to all HoDs instructing them to urgently deal with the exception reports and action them.

What action is required from us before schools reopen: Provincial Secretaries t arrange meetings with all their HoDs of departments to

1. Get a full report on the exception report as produced by Persal as indicated in the preceding paragraphs
2. Agree to strategies to lodge queries  and not disputes by individuals who might have been affected, this must not affect learning and teaching where everyone goes to district to lodge a query because it is the role of the principal to coordinate salary queries. This responsibility must be given to them by the 11th and branch leaders must get copies of such queries as backup from Site Stewards
3. Force PEDs to submit correct dates of appointment for affected educators not later than 11th so that payment can be effected programmatically and must refuse any suggestion that provinces do the payment because this will delay
4. In order to assist in the correct interpretation of the agreement all negotiators must have sessions with all the FTSS to take them through the agreement and the example from the DOE. This will help us in eliminating unnecessary queries because educators are not doing correct calculations.
5. We must avoid resolving this technical problems through the media. Media is making us loose focus and generalizing the matters instead of dealing with genuine problems. Union protocol on media must be adhered to and no one must declare any action through the media even if the PEC might have taken such a position. Leave the media to national because we don’t want publicity but resolution of the problem.
6. Each province should provide us with stats of the affected educators per category as reflected on the exception report as we do not have the national exception report.

Thanks you comrades and hope we shall maintain the unitary status of the Union. What was reported by media coming from Gauteng last week was unfortunate and we should thank comrades Ledimo and Chabalala for handling it the way it was handled.

Comradely

Mugwena Maluleke

General Secretary