More than 200 unemployed teachers in KwaZulu Natal staged a sit-in at the Department of Education offices in Pietermaritzburg (PMB) since yesterday. The angry teachers have vowed not to move out of the department's offices until their demands are met.

DEMANDING JOBS

This comes just a week before the much-anticipated general elections scheduled for 29 May. Ndumiso Mngwengwe who is the spokesperson of the organisation which planned the sit-in, Unemployed United Educators, confirmed the sit-in and said, "We are very clear about our demands; we spent years in tertiary institutions studying to become educators to change the lives of our families. We are now qualified teachers and we are unemployed. I finished my studies years ago and I have been everywhere in the country trying to find a teaching job. Nothing has been successful. We decided to confront our own province to employ us as professional accredited teachers. We cannot allow government to continue using people that are not qualified as teachers in our posts," Mngwengwe said, adding that as the educators, they are not worried about the number of days they will spend at the department and that they will vacate the offices once the government meets their demands and employs them.

DYING FOR A JOB

Nontokozo Zondi from Ulundi, who qualified as a teacher eight years ago, said she joined the sit in because she has been unemployed for more than seven years after she graduated from the University of Zululand. "I'm not going anywhere until I'm given an employment letter. If one must die to achieve this goal so, be it," she said. Zondi claimed that some government officials are demanding huge amounts of money from them in order to secure employment. Another unemployed teacher Jabulile Mhlongo also said she was not going anywhere until she gets a teaching post. "We know that there are a lot of teaching posts across the province but we are excluded because we don't have money to bribe officials. Some officials are selling posts to us and it is unfair because we don't have such money. Unqualified people are given teaching posts over us who went to school for it," she said.

"WE FEEL YOUR FRUSTRATION"

KZN Education spokesperson, Muzi Mahlambi, said that they feel the frustration the teachers are going through. "This is an undesirable situation, no parent wants to send a child to university for them to come back sit at home without a job, similarly no student wants to study and at the end of the day not be employed," he said. Mahlambi added that the department does not want to punish the graduates by not hiring them when it is in the position to do so. "But we are unable to hire all of them as some are oversubscribed in terms of subjects that are not in demand. We do hire every time there is a vacancy and that is done through the HR App," he said.