The Southland Times reports that the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) will announce more redundancies in response to a million cut in Government funding next year.

At a SIT council meeting on Monday night chief executive Penny Simmonds said there had been five redundancies since March and it was likely more would occur.

“I can see over the next wee while we are working with reduced expenditure. It means there will be courses dropped,” she said.

TEU organiser Kris Smith is contacting Ms Simmonds about the proposed redundancies but says that union members have significant concerns about these redundancies because SIT is in a strong financial position with its existing cash reserves.

“What is the point of all that money if it is not going to be used for the benefit of the community?” asked Ms Smith.

As well as the five people who had been made redundant from the institute this year a further five who resigned have not been replaced, Ms Simmonds said. These redundancies were from both the Christchurch and Southland campuses and included teachers from carpentry, electrical, engineering and film production.

Ms Simmonds told the Southland Times she was “reluctant” to guess how many more redundancies would take place and when, but there was “certainly not going to be a huge number”.

Thanks to Te Ara @ Flickr for the photo