Search This Blog

Saturday 11 February 2012

SWAZILAND SACKS 1,200 TEACHERS

The Swaziland Government has sacked 1,200 school teachers due to a financial crisis in the kingdom, the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) said yesterday (10 February 2012)

AFP news agency reported that last year Swaziland employed 3,000 teachers on one-year renewable contracts, with the promise of permanent jobs eventually.

Now, 1,200 of the contracts have been dropped Muzi Mahlanga, secretary general of the Swaziland National Union of Teachers told AFP.

‘We met government and informed it of the appalling situation and gave them up to next week Wednesday to employ all the teachers currently left in the lurch,’ he said.

‘Otherwise we will engage in a mass action that will ground the operations of schools,’ he said.

SNAT has been at the forefront of protests against King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, who keeps up a jet-set lifestyle while seven in ten of his subjects live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 per day.

The Swazi Government also has not made its payments for children who receive free primary education, or to its support for school going AIDS orphans.

No comments: