The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education is owed nearly R600 million by former staff members who resigned or were dismissed.
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Former employees of the cash-strapped KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education owe the department close to R600 million due to administrative errors that allowed them to continue receiving salaries after leaving their posts.
Members of the Education Portfolio Committee have revealed that the department is owed nearly R600 million by former staff members who resigned or were dismissed. This represents a staggering R200 million increase in this debt over the last three years. In 2023, The Mercury reported on this debt, which at the time stood at R400 million.
At that time, it was reported that part of the reason was that staff members who had resigned, retired, or been dismissed continued drawing salaries long after leaving the department without being detected by the system. Committee members stated that the problem has grown since then.
The revelations also come as the department is under severe financial strain. It has battled to pay funds for norms and standards in schools, impacting their ability to operate. Some schools have had their services cut off by municipalities because of non-payment for services.
It was reported that at least two schools in the Phoenix area had their services cut off earlier this year because they owed the municipality close to a million rand for services.
MK Party committee member Thuthukani Madondo described the situation as unacceptable. “It cannot be that the department's budget is in such a precarious manner, and yet there are funds that belong to the department that are sitting with the department's former employees.”
He said they were recently informed by the department that it is attempting to make some recoveries. He is also concerned about the issue of consequence management against those who should have been preventing this. “While they said they are taking action, that action has not been clear,” said Madondo.
DA committee member Sakhile Mngadi said the staff debt has risen to R600 million to date.
IFP councillor in eThekwini, Jonathan Annipen, who has had to deal with school closures in his area due to non-payment for services, said this is a serious problem. “The revelation that the Department of Education is owed approximately R600 million by former employees is deeply concerning, particularly at a time when many schools are struggling to keep their lights on and water running due to unpaid municipal accounts,” he said.
He stated that the situation points to serious administrative failures within the department. “Overpayments of this magnitude do not occur overnight; they accumulate over time because of weak financial controls, poor payroll oversight, and a failure to act decisively when irregular payments are detected.
“Any well-run institution should have systems in place to identify and immediately stop erroneous payments. The fact that the debt has ballooned to more than half a billion rand suggests that these controls have either collapsed or were never properly enforced,” he said.
Annipen pointed out that consequences are not abstract, stating that schools across eThekwini are facing disconnections because their utility accounts remain unpaid.
He added that funding that should be supporting teaching, learning, and basic operations is instead tied up in recoveries that may take years, if they happen at all.
“Ultimately, every rand lost through poor administration or corruption is a rand taken away from our learners. At a time when schools are already under severe financial pressure, this situation is both unacceptable and unsustainable. What is urgently required is strong financial governance, transparent investigations, and decisive accountability to ensure that public education resources are protected and directed where they are needed most — in our classrooms,” he said.
Department spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi said the department is going to address the issue. “This (staff debt) is the information that we have presented to the oversight committees ourselves. The department has over 110,000 employees; some resign similarly due to misconduct involving fraud and other forms of resignations.”
He said that due to the manual process of submitting documents that the department has been using, there have been some issues and delays in terms of the documents reaching the head of the department from schools or other levels.
“We have since identified those gaps and are closing the loose ends; hence, we have been commended by such oversight committees that, indeed, we are going in the right direction in terms of turning the corner.
“Right now, we are beginning to see the fruits of the mechanisms that we are implementing in recovering the funds and closing the gaps regarding current employees leaving the system,” he said.
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