TAWU looks into membership slump

Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday October 27, 2015 14:43

The decline of membership was admitted by union president, Frizon Moyo who said that some members prefer to have two membership cards for different unions. “Some of our members have left our union to join other unions.  We have to work hard to bring more members to our union.  We have many tertiaries in our country and therefore our membership could have grown,” Moyo said.

The union president said that they are living in confusing and troubling times for the entire education, training and research sector.

He said the troubling times emanate from the refusal of top management teams of most education, training and research institutions to engage in good faith with their trade union.  “This is a crisis in-the-making because the losers of the whole episode are those innocent souls who are supposed to benefit from activities of the education, training and research sector.  These innocent souls happen to be our members’ one customer and worse still they are the future leaders of this magnificent republic,” he said.

Moyo complained that Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) is not doing enough to solve problems that arise from the ministry.

He said as a result of this failure MoESD has created an inherently dysfunctional managerial and operational structure in all brigades.

Meanwhile, the deputy director of education development at the Department of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (DTVET), Mildred Boduwe, said they are facing challenges of dilapidated physical resources and infrastructure.

She said the other challenge is of inadequately qualified staff. “Six hundred teachers have a teaching qualification, while more than 500 do not.  We have since secured money as the ministry to take some teachers for further training.  The other challenge is of poor resource utilisation,” said Boduwe.