Last week, the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers announced the beginning of a campaign to press for change in the payment of house allowances by the Teachers Service Commission.
The current policy, which has existed for decades, pegs teachers’ house allowances on their areas of service. The employer has prescribed four regional categories: Nairobi; large towns such as Mombasa, Kisumu, Malindi and Naivasha; county headquarters such as Nyeri, Eldoret, Kericho, Kakamega, Garissa, Kisii and Nakuru; and the rest of the country.
Teachers in Nairobi earn more than double the house allowances of their counterparts. For instance, Nairobi teachers at Grade C2, equivalent to Job Group K, take home Sh16,500 in house allowances, while those in the rest of the country earn Sh7,500. Nairobi teachers at Grade C3, equivalent to Job Group L, take home Sh35,000 while their compatriots get Sh15,400.
Any policy that begets such grotesque inequalities is not only unfair but flies in the face of sound human resource management principles and is, indeed, illegal. The Constitution prohibits all forms of discrimination and provides the right to decent housing.
Teachers’ right to decent housing can be weighed on a number of legitimate parameters such as work experience, family size, special needs and others, but certainly not on one’s area of service.
Set as it was in an era when municipalities provided the bulk of housing for public servants in urban areas, the policy has become counterproductive to current national education policies. Back then, rental charges by the Nairobi City Council were considerably higher than those by other municipalities. With the vast majority of Kenyans living on their farms, public schools in rural areas tried their best to provide housing for teachers, while landlords charged affordable rents teachers could afford.
Those market dynamics have so markedly shifted that it is wrong to assume that teachers in Nairobi pay the highest rents. Many more Kenyans live in urban areas, where rent has skyrocketed. These changes have happened when schools can hardly provide housing for teachers. To get a full picture of teachers’ housing needs would take mind-boggling time and resources that the employer does not have. But old assumptions no longer apply.
The current policy has run its course, and now creates more problems than it addresses. The pay discrepancies have created huge demand by teachers to work in Nairobi, many of whose schools are overstaffed, while those in the periphery have yawning deficits.
The policy is perpetuating the historical marginalisation of underserved areas and undermining the rights of children from those areas to quality education. Given the teachers’ role as consumers and role models, its effect on educational and economic outcomes across Kenya can only be graver.
We have availed ourselves to engage the employer in dialogue to bring this outdated policy to a logical end and in its place put a remuneration system that properly reflects today’s realities. At the very minimum, we want housing allowances harmonised based on job groups.
Our cost analysis has shown that the new system would be affordable to taxpayers, who will reap its benefits immediately in the rational deployment of teachers that will ensue.
The TSC already pays other allowances based strictly on job groups, and housing should be no exception.
