Picket set to be held in Cape Town over planned WC teacher cuts
The demonstration is in solidarity with over 2,400 teachers earmarked to lose their jobs as a result of budget cuts in January next year.
Picture: Pexels
CAPE TOWN - Civil society organisations, unions, teachers, parents, and learners are expected to picket outside the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) offices on Friday morning.
The demonstration is in solidarity with over 2,400 teachers earmarked to lose their jobs as a result of budget cuts in January 2024.
More than 1,600 teachers are set to lose employment in Cape Town alone.
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The picket comes after a meeting in Salt River last week, in which stakeholders tried to find a way forward and stop the planned purge of teachers.
Provincial Education MEC David Maynier's announcement last month to cut thousands of teacher jobs in Western Cape schools was not well received by the education sector in the province.
Maynier blamed the R3.8 billion budget shortfall by National Treasury as the reason behind the layoffs.
However, the education sector believes government can reverse this decision and find another alternative.
The spokesperson of recently-formed Western Cape education advocacy group Education Crisis Committee, Simone Cupido, said the sector was already facing many other challenges.
"We will also be advocating for a drastic revision and change in the current state of education in the Western Cape, where there are already overcrowded classrooms. There's already very difficult placement system underway where students struggle to be placed in the beginning of the year."
EDUCATION IN ICU
Speaking to Eyewitness News on the sidelines of Parliament last week, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube said she would engage National Treasury to re-consider the impact of the budget reductions.
Maynier meanwhile encouraged all those involved in the education sector to work with the department to find a solution to the problem.
Freedom Front Plus member of the Western Cape legislature, Grant Marais, said losing thousands of teaching posts in the province would be akin to sending the education system into ICU.
Marais said the cuts would erase all the progress made since the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The quality of education will effectively diminish, with fewer teachers than what we had in 2021. But the root cause of the national fiscal emergency dilemma was the constant bailing out of failing state-owned enterprises. This was fueled by three nemeses, namely corruption, cadre deployment, and the racially-based Black Economic Empowerment policy."