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TO:        Ms Phumza Mpoyiya
             Committee Secretary

I am an educator at the College with 15 years service as a GDE employee. There are serious concerns around Chapter 4 of the FET Colleges Bill pertaining to the appointment of personnel in Public Colleges. The concerns emanate from the lack of clarity around certain issues that borders around conditions of Employment and Benefits.

The request is that before the Bill is passed the following areas be clarified. These include but not limited to the following:

· What are the consequences of this change over to me as the Educator?

· How is it going to impact on my working conditions?

· What protection do I have in terms of retrenchments in case of operational requirements? One takes into cognizance the fact that the DOE is introducing a NCV, this might impact negatively on student numbers as a result it might force the Council, which would have recently became the Employer to carry the burden of retrenching the Educators or is this one of the reason of the Government to pass the buck?

· What is going to happen to my Medical benefits? What if I had joined GEMS and I am no longer employed by state because after resigning from GEMS you cannot get the subsidy again?

· What is going to happen with my Leave conditions? Our annual leave is regulated by the Employment of Educator Act, what impacts will the change over do to my leave? Capped Leave?

· In fact am I still an Educator? Will I still be a member of SACE? Can you employ Educators under different Acts?

· What will happen to my housing subsidy, thirteenth cheque, and bursary benefit?

· What will happen to all the gains accrued through all the negotiations in the ELRC around the issues of salary progression and increments related from the Integrated Quality Management System?

It is also important to bear in mind that the government wants to put our fate to a College Councils who comprise of:

· People who are only doing this responsibility on voluntary bases,

· People who are running their own businesses

· People who only come to the College in the afternoon for meetings (if they are not attending to some business meeting overseas).

· People who do not have all the time to sit down and work on policies or even to attend to crucial issues that affect the Lectures)

· Some of them do not have the capacity to take up on such a huge responsibility.

The points mentioned above about the Council will ultimately mean that all the responsibilities will fall in the shoulders of the Principal and his/her Human Resource Manager. The question then arise, Will that Manager have the capacity of managing all the Human Resource responsibilities? Manage the persal system of all these educators?

In closing one request thorough investigations to the issues raised above because to some of us this directly impacts our Livelihood!

Thank you

Ms Fikile Madi

South West Gauteng for FET

Human Resource Directorate

Tel: (011) 984 1260

Fax: (011 984 1262

Cell: 083 758 2587