Ei-iE

Education International strongly supports its affiliates in Kenya, who have been waiting for 18 years for a promised pay rise, recently restated by a Supreme Court decision.

In July, Kenyan teachers were given a pay rise of over 50 percent by the Labour Court.

However, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the institution responsible for hiring and dismissing teachers and advising the government on matters relating to the teaching profession, claimed that this rise is unaffordable. Its appeal against the decision was rejected by the Supreme Court on 24 August.

The education ministry has now invited the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) to negotiate.

“We are not going to negotiate with the government over a court order; court orders are to be implemented,” stressed the KNUT General Secretary, and President of the Education International (EI)’s Africa Regional Committee, Wilson Sossion.

He added that teachers are “among the most obedient taxpayers” and deserve the pay raise as ordered years ago.

The KNUT also firmly rejected the TSC argument that there is no money available to be allocated to increase teacher salaries.

“We believe it is absurd that the Finance Ministry says there is not enough money,” Sossion said, pointing out that the income tax revenues represent annually about 2.5 billion US dollars.

Mosses Nuturuma of the Kenyan Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET), another EI member organisation, also accused the TSC of hypocrisy, explaining that “the TSC cannot break the law while claiming legal protection”.

The situation has become tense as students finishing primary and secondary school will sit their national examinations in a couple of weeks.

The KNUT and the KUPPET asked all teachers to stay away from schools, and appeals were made to parents to join the teachers in mass protests.

“We are parents too,” Sossion said. “Unionists fight for quality education and motivated teachers. We do not enjoy strikes, walking out of schools is not our desire, we are compelled. It is our last option”.

There is considerable public support for the strikers, the trade unions noted, and, on social media, the #payteachers hashtag is very popular.

The Trade Unions Congress of Kenya (TUC-K) also fully supported the strike and called the government to respect law and order. “We are only asking for 1.4 billion Kenyan shillings (13 million US dollars) a month. This is an amount that the Government can entirely pay,” highlighted the TUC-K Deputy General Secretary Mukhwaya.

The starting salary for a teacher in Kenya is currently around 160 US dollars a month. For decades, the Government has been engaged in legal battles with unions over salaries. Kenyan teachers have been demanding better pay since before independence. In 1997, a strike paralysed the education system for two weeks before a general election, and a pay increase was awarded, to be realised in phases over the course of five years. This agreement, however, is still to be fully implemented.