Assistants say no way to no pay

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GRAAFF-REINET NEWS & VIDEO - Desperate teacher assistants and general assistants of various schools in Graaff-Reinet gathered at the Department of Education in town on Wednesday demanding to be paid.

The protesting assistants said they haven't been paid their salaries since they started work on 1 December.

The assistants are employed by the department to help schools with Covid-19 protocol and other tasks. Their contracts expire at the end of March, but they have not seen a cent. They should have received R3 500 at the end of December and end of January, and fear they may end up working for free.

It came to light this morning that many of their names haven't even been loaded onto the department's payroll system.

A teacher assistant from Union Preparatory School said that a senior curriculum official, Mr P de Villiers told them yesterday morning that officials are on their way to Grahamstown to capture the unpaid assistants' data on the system.

They were also told that they should get the outstanding salaries due to them by Monday 22 February. He said of the 15 assistants at Union Preparatory, only two have been paid.

He is sure that all schools who make use of assistants have been affected, as assistants from Isibane Primary, Lingcom Primary and Thembalesizwe Primary also participated in the protest.

Union spokesperson, Mariëtte Burger responded as follows: "We sympathise with the assistants' situation, and trust it will be resolved soon."

The District Manager of Education in the Sarah Baartman Municipality, Nkosinathi Godlo, told the Advertiser that he is attending to the matter and checking the assistants' names against the data base.

Watch a video below: