The Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) has ruled that recruitment of intern teachers is illegal, opening a possible opportunity for those teachers to get better terms.
The national government may now be forced to pay the nearly 60,000 intern teachers hired by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) full salaries for the period they have served, in addition to converting them to permanent and pensionable terms.
The court ruled in favour of the intern teachers, indicating that TSC violated their right to fair labour practice by giving them internship jobs while they were qualified.
The petition was filed by Human Rights, with the respondents being TSC, Cabinet Secretary for Ministry of Education, and the Attorney General on November 29, 2022.
In the Wednesday ruling, Justice Byrum Ongaya ruled that the commission went out of their mandate to employ qualified and registered teachers as interns. The teachers were employed through a circular dated January 4, 2023.
“It is established that the practice of employing discriminately qualified teachers duly registered as such interns amounted to violation of Articles 27 on Freedom from Discrimination and Equality before the Law,” the court ruled.
The TSC had advertised for intern jobs, the successful applicants being posted to Junior Secondary School (JSS) under primary school jurisdictions.
The court ruled that the intern teachers are trained and duly qualified and they were employed to teach as duly qualified teachers.
It prohibited TSC from recruiting and employing student-teachers as teachers as its constitutional and statutory mandate is confined only to employment of duly qualified teachers.
The ruling incidentally also throws the programme into uncertainty since it was introduced to bridge shortage gaps, even as schools are expected to reopen in two weeks time.
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By Obegi Malack
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