The Department of Basic Education is cleaning house and reforming how appointments are made after a jobs-for-cash report found that it was at the mercy of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) in six provinces.Department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga on Monday said proposed legislative changes‚ which are being finalised‚ dealt with issues emanating from the report. One of the proposed changes is that the heads of provincial departments be responsible for making appointments‚ promotions or transfers‚ the main area in which Sadtu and other unions allegedly ran rackets in collusion with school governing bodies. Sadtu has already made its feelings known about the report and remains adamant that it could take it on legal review.Sadtu‚ a Congress of South African Trade Unions affiliate and the largest teachers’ union in the country‚ is due to hold a central executive committee meeting at which it will adopt a formal response to the damning report.However‚ it appears the department has shrugged off the union’s objections to the report and is steaming ahead with its recommendations. Among these is a proposal that the basic education minister be empowered to make regulations to prescribe how hiring should be done.Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga set up a ministerial task team to probe allegations that Sadtu members were selling principal and deputy principal posts for R30‚000 or more at schools in the Eastern Cape‚ KwaZulu-Natal‚ Limpopo‚ Gauteng‚ Mpumalanga and North West. The union denied the allegations and undertook to co-operate with the probe.The task team’s report paints Sadtu in a negative light and notes that the department had real control in the Western Cape‚ Northern Cape‚ and Free State.Sadtu spokeswoman Nomusa Cembi said: “We will be having a special national executive committee meeting before making a final decision. But taking the matter on legal review remains an option.”In the report‚ the National Professional Teachers Organisation of SA (Naptosa) expressed “discomfort at the report appearing to take a very negative view of unionism and unions to the point where it appears that a fair amount of ‘union bashing’ has crept in instead of (a) clinical investigation and analysis of facts”.- TMG Digital/BDLive..