By Elvis Wasike
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has affirmed that all registered Board of Management (BOM) teachers will be paid their accrued salaries.
“I want to assure that we will only cater for BOM teachers whose details will be availed to the Ministry,” he said, adding that the names will be confirmed before any payments are done.
The salaries, he noted, are usually not catered directly by the government but promised no single cent will be stolen hence the need to confirm only the genuine teachers are paid.
Speaking in Eldoret during the inspection of Eldoret Polytechnic and Rift Valley Technical Training Institute on their preparedness for reopening, Magoha said this is to cushion teachers from the effects of the virus.
Following the reporting of the first case of Covid-19 case in Kenya, learning institutions were closed and BOM teachers have gone for months without pay.
Unable to meet their financial obligations, a number of the teachers have been ejected from their rental houses and forced to take up menial jobs as survival tactics.
However, on July 27, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed Treasury CS Ukur Yattani and his Education counterpart George Magoha (Education) to expedite the process of disbursing the funds to alleviate the plight of the teachers.
Early August, Treasury reported that it had released an estimated Sh11.2b for Free Primary and subsidized Secondary education programmes.
The cash, Treasury said was meant to enable schools pay non-teaching staff, suppliers and meet other costs.
Even as reports indicated that the money had been wired to the schools’ accounts, it later emerged that the same was reversed due to lack of appropriate data on the BOM teachers.
The situation is exacerbated as schools remain closed till January 2021, further pushing teachers into financial uncertainty.
“I want to say here that no school shall be opened since we don’t want out lie children’s life in danger of contracting the virus therefore let us be patient.
Nobody is happy about closing the institutions. In the U.S, for example, where they have kind of reopened schools, 100,000 school children have already caught the virus,” he stated.
Magoha, however expressed his satisfaction with the preparedness of Eldoret National Polytechnic and Rift Valley Technical Training Institute.
“We have inspected many institutions but so far Eldoret Polytechnic and the RVTTI are two of the best. They’re not completely ready, but I can dare say that they’re going to reopen ahead of others. We shall look at them again in a month,” he admired.
Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang’ issued a circular to County Directors outlining conditions to be met before BOM teachers are paid their salary arears.
Using a special form, the various schools are supposed to fill in the following details such as TSC number, Name of County, School Name, Number of Teachers, and Teachers’ Name in full.
The requirement to produce TSC numbers might pose a challenge to hundreds of the teachers, mostly in rural areas where the need to have one is overlooked as their services is in high demand.
