By Roy Hezron
Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) Scheme of Service prepared in January 2018 is still a draft copy three years since its preparation and validation.
According to the draft copy of the scheme in possession by Education News, it was supposed to be operational on or before July 1, 2018.
“The Schemes of Service will become operational on or before 1st July 2018. On implementation, all trained and qualified serving ECDE Teachers will join the Scheme, on condition that they meet the set minimum requirements,” read the draft copy in part.
The drafting and validation process was done by representatives of County Executive Committee Members (CECMs) of Education selected from various counties, representatives from the Ministry of Education, Teachers Service Commission (TSC), Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), national treasury, directorate from Public Service management, ECDE County Directors, and Council of Governors Secretariat for Human Resources and Education Committee.
Since then, ECDE teachers have been remunerated and employed under different terms of services in various counties, a move that has seen the teachers under their union, the Kenya Union of Pre-Primary Education Teachers (Kunoppet) being left in dilemma on who exactly between the Council of Governors (CoG) and Counties is supposed to implement the Schemes of Service.
In a letter dated March 17, 2018 just three months after the drafting and validation process of the scheme of Service to the union, Secretary General Mr. Samuel Opiyo, CoG distance itself from the MoU urging that such can be executed by individual counties.
“In this regard, the Council may participate in the negotiations for the terms of the Recognitions Agreements and the Collective Bargaining Agreement to ensure that all teachers enjoy uniform terms across the counties. Therefore, the Council can neither sign a Recognition Agreement nor a Collective Bargaining Agreement on behalf of the County Governments. The same can only be signed by the respective County Public Service Boards (CPSBs),” reads the letter in part signed by Jacqueline Mogeni the then Council Chief Executive Officer (CEO), which was further copied to all County Governors and County Public Service Boards (CPSB).
The letter further adds that “In view of the above and the mandate of the council, we are constrained from entering into agreement on behalf of counties. The council is only a coordinating body. As such, the MoU in question can only be executed between Knuppet (Kunoppet) and respective forty-seven (47) counties.”
Between March 29 and April 2, 2019, the union further wrote two letters to Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) with same subject matter of ECDE Scheme Service.
The union basically wanted to find out from the Commission whether the CoG had developed Scheme of Service for ECDE teachers and why such is not used to guide the pay structure for the ECDE teachers in the 47 County Governments.
In addition, the union wanted to know from the commission as to whether the CoG has information that most counties pay ECDE teachers far below government gazetted minimum wage in violation of Article 41 (2) (a) of the Constitution which confers right to fair remuneration and whether the CoG has sought advice from SRC on how to remunerate the ECDE teachers, and whether the commission had provided any guidelines, pay structure, job evaluation or approved the scheme of service for the ECDE teachers.
In response SRC declined stating that they can only share such information with the employer in this case the CoG and not the unions.
The union has since been opposing direct employment by the county governments and wants its members transferred to the Teachers Service Commission, accusing the counties of poorly managing pre-primary education centres and stating that the devolved units have a lot of resources meant for ECDE centres but they can’t handle teachers.
The teachers have since been receiving raw deal since most counties have no formal engagement with them.
For instance, in Laikipia County, 428 ECDE teachers got a rare win against the county government after a court ruled that they deserve a salary increment and that the County should classify the teachers as permanent employees, in a case that was field by the teachers through the union for ‘unfair labour practice of subjecting them to unstructured contract service.’
