Two unions are pushing the government, through the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), to employ thousands of teachers employed by school boards of management permanently.
The Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions and Hospital and Allied Workers (Kudheiha) Workers) and the Kenya National Union of Teacher (Knut) have urged the government to urgently address the plight of the teachers after the Nation highlighted their problems on Monday.
Kudheiha further petitioned the Ministry of Education to release money for schools so that BoM employees in public schools can be paid.
Knut boss Wilson Sossion asked TSC to consider absorbing and shouldering the BoM teachers’ salaries.
“The payment of any trained and qualified teacher in any school should be transferred to the TSC. The teachers are assigned by BoMs but their salaries must be paid by TSC in full,” he said.
He went on: “They should be paid for the months they have gone without pay. The law recognises TSC as the valid institution for employing teachers,” he said.
“It is unconstitutional. It is a gross violation of labour laws to transfer the burden of paying teachers to parents. Those schools are government institutions and those teachers have TSC numbers,” said Mr Sossion.
According to the KNUT boss, all teachers have equal rights. He said that under the Education Act, BoMs are not mandated to pay teachers’ salaries.
Meanwhile, Kudheiha yesterday released a statement saying some BoM workers had been forced to take pay cuts while others were going without salaries.
“Since the government closed all schools in March over the Covid-19 pandemic, the workers have not been paid their salaries and allowances,” said Mr Thomas Omariba,the union’s Kisii and Nyamira branches secretary.
“This is against the Constitution, labour laws and the rule of natural justice,”
Mr Omariba said the union had received reports that some employers had taken advantage of Covid-19 to declare illegal redundancies, terminations, pay cuts or unpaid leave and warned them to stop the practice to avoid unnecessary and endless disputes.
