There seems to be no end in sight for professionals who get together to defend what they see as invasion of their turf. Last week, we looked at medics in Uganda. Now, teachers in public schools in Kenya have vowed to resist government policy of employing new intern teachers who are rumoured to receive more pay than them. The unions claim the Ministry of Education has proposed the hiring of 18,000 intern teachers early next year when free secondary education will be rolled out in fulfillment of the Jubilee Government’s 2017 election pledges.
It is rumoured that each teacher will be paid Sh15,000 per month as opposed to the Sh21,757 that newly employed teachers take home, according to Kenya National Union of Teachers, KNUT and Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers, KUPPET.
Top officials of KUPPET have warned of industrial action should the government press on with the proposals to employ teachers on short-term contracts. The union’s Chairman, Omboko Milemba, and his KNUT counterpart, Wilson Sossion, have faulted the ministry’s plan, arguing that it is illegal to employ teachers on short-term contracts.
Instead, they want the government to employ 40,000 teachers on permanent and pensionable terms. “We have learnt with shock that the Government, through the Ministry of Education, wants to employ intern teachers. The ministry has no legal basis to do so,” said Milemba, who also serves as MP for Emuhaya District. “This will be a back-door policy. It is only TSC that is allowed to hire teachers and not the ministry.”
The two union leaders claimed that Education Cabinet Secretary, Fred Matiangi, had proposed to introduce a sessional paper in Parliament early next year to validate the process of hiring interns.
In a letter to the National Treasury, TSC requested the Government to provide Sh15.85 billion per year for the recruitment of 24,027 teachers annually for five years starting from next year. The filling of 3,786 new vacancies for teachers is aimed at replacing those who have left the service through natural attrition from July 1 to August 31, 2017.
However, it is not clear whether the interns have been budgeted for. Teachers have also faulted the new curriculum rollout, saying no adequate preparations have been made by the government to train teachers.
