SowetanLive reports that Department of Basic Education (DBE) Minister Siviwe Gwarube has directed her department to identify the employees who were responsible for the blunder that resulted in more than 150,000 assistants at schools around the country not receiving their salaries for months.

The assistants work under the Basic Education Employment Initiative and their job is to help teachers manage school curricula. “I have instructed both the director-general and the acting director-general to immediately institute the appropriate consequence management and hold people accountable who have failed to discharge their responsibilities in the management and the implementation of the [initiative]. This is not about scapegoating ... we dare not fail again,” Gwarube indicated.

Schools and provincial education departments were required to upload attendance registers coupled with biometric confirmations as proof that the assistants concerned were indeed present and carrying out their duties. The captured attendance registers were not uploaded in full by the relevant deadline. The delayed payments also caused a public spat between Gwarube and Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi, which played itself out on social media as they argued over whose responsibility it was to pay the teacher assistants.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Koena Mashale at SowetanLive
• Read too, Government tightens UIF controls following teacher assistants' payment delays, at EWN

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