The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) should ratify rules setting the time within which newly hired teachers should receive their first payments to avoid delays blamed for low morale and mental health issues among teachers, Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has said.
Speaking during an interview at a local media station, KNUT Secretary General Collins Oyuu said that delays in release of salaries beyond the normally acceptable duration of three months compromised output by newly hired teachers and affected them psychologically.
He lamented that recently posted Junior Secondary School (JSS) had not received salaries for six months now.
Oyuu noted that the delay forced the youthful teachers to pile up debts, suffer low esteem, risk a bad reputation at community level and lowered their morale, ending up affecting education standards at the local level and the country at large.
“In the past, newly hired teachers would wait a minimum of three months before receiving their salaries, but currently the situation has worsened,” he said, terming the delay as an abuse of labour laws.
The KNUT boss urged the government to hasten the release of the salaries to the newly hired teachers, some of whom he claimed had returned to class after years of being in the cold and needed the payments to motivate them to teach with dedication.
“Some of the teachers qualified more than six years ago and despite being lucky to now gain employment, the delay in salaries has affected their morale,” said Oyuu.
He further assured teachers that discussions were ongoing between the government and Union to streamline pending issues.
Elsewhere, a group of JSS teachers from Mbeere South have suggested that a system be put in place to have penalties placed on TSC for delayed salaries given that many a time, the delays occurred long after the government had released budgetary allocations.
By Robert Nyagah
Get more stories from our website: Education News
You can also follow our social media pages on Twitter: Education News KE and Facebook: Education News Newspaper for timely updates.
