The South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) says the Department of Basic Education has failed to reach its target of vaccinating over half a million teachers and support staff against the coronavirus.

Thursday is the deadline set by the department to complete the roll-out in the education sector which started 15 days ago.

The teachers union says over 400 000 teachers have received their shots.

Sadtu General Secretary Mugwena Maluleke says people are being turned away from vaccination centres and this delays the process.

Maluleke says, “Yesterday, we were very busy trying to really address some of these issues where they are not being found in the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS). Despite the fact that the persal was uploaded in the EVDS, some centres do register them manually and the minister has made a call that they must not be returned. If they can not be returned we can meet a target of a hundred thousand today.”

Sadtu’s Mugwena Maluleke on vaccination of teachers:

KZN education aims to speed up teacher vaccinations

The KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Department of Education says that so far 97 000 teachers have been vaccinated.

MEC Kwazi Mshengu says the department wants to reach the 127 000 teachers that are expected to be vaccinated.

He says the pandemic and its impact on educators has had ripple effects on teaching and learning.

“We continue to work hard with the unions and the SGBs (School Governing Bodies ) to continue to really run this particular positive message so that eventually we can get as many people to get vaccinated. I mean we have lost so much time, we opened late this year, the rotation has affected learning and you can really see the gaps now and those are the things we want to close before it becomes too late for us to be able to deal with such learning gaps.”