KUPPET (Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers) in Mombasa County has threatened to paralyze learning in January should the government fail to employ them on permanent and pensionable terms.
They want the government to absorb all intern teachers and further domicile Junior Secondary School (JSS) learning in secondary school.
Mombasa branch KUPPET Executive Secretary Lynnete Kamadi said if their demands are not addressed, they will instruct teachers to boycott teaching, a move likely to obstruct learning in the county.
“As teachers, we don’t want a situation where politicians stand in burials and issue employment letters. We are saying come January, if there are no letters of permanent and pensionable, there is no going to class until our cry is heard,” said Kamadi.
About 220 teachers were employed by Teachers Service Commission (TSC) in the latest employment to teach in the JSS in the county.
Kamadi said it is unfair for the TSC to employ replacement teachers on permanent and pensionable terms and ask intern teachers to sign a further one-year contract while paying them peanuts.
She made the remarks during a peaceful demonstration bringing together JSS teachers and KUPPET officials along the busy Mombasa’s Moi Avenue.
Some of the JSS teachers who spoke to the media vowed not to step in class until TSC issues them with letters of confirmation. They claimed the situation is so dire that they are even forced to teach subjects they did not study in the university.
“We intern teachers are being coerced to teach subjects in which we are not trained contrary to the letters of offer of internship which acknowledges the two teaching subjects per teacher. Like me I am forced to teach visual arts yet I studied Maths and Physics in the university,” said Poline Anyango, one of the JSS teachers in Mombasa.
Obara Kevin, a JSS English and Literature teacher, said the little stipend given by the government is too little to sustain teachers staying in the city.
Another KUPPET official Nelson Mandela, Mombasa County Vice Chairman, said by January all teachers teaching in JSS should now start teaching in secondary school where they want it domiciled.
“We are telling the president to stop joking with the lives of Kenyan children. We must be a country that obeys the institutions created by law. Teaching is a noble job which should not be politicised,”said Mandela.
By Hilton Mwabili
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