KUPPET Asks TSC To Raise High-Risk Teachers’ Pay
The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) has proposed that the salaries of teachers in the three counties located in the country’s northeastern region, along with Turkana and Tana River, which are also experiencing problems with safety, be reevaluated.
According to the Deputy Secretary-General, Moses Nthurima, the current hardship payment for teachers does not sufficiently reflect the risks that they face in these locations.
Before the teacher protests, the Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki asked the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to deploy non-local instructors for shorter periods of time in hazardous northern areas and then transfer them afterward. This was done in order to avoid long-term instructor turnover in the region. The mental health of non-local instructors is being negatively impacted as a result of the insecurity, as Kindiki informed a parliamentary education committee on August 2nd.
He also said that local populations are complicit, at least to some extent, in the incitement of violence against non-local instructors, which results in threats emanating from local communities. In order to protect teachers from attacks by al-Shabaab, the minister in charge of security suggested temporarily concentrating them all in one area.
According to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), the county of Mandera needs approximately 2,000 instructors to fill vacancies in its 300 public elementary schools and 550 public secondary schools. The sad slaughter of 28 teachers that occurred in Mandera eight years ago was blamed on the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Internal Security for failing to respond to requests from teachers in the northeast. The massacre took place in Mandera.
Teachers have cited difficult confrontations with students, head teachers, parents, and county education administrators in petitions to the TSC demanding transfers or improved security. These individuals referred to the teachers as adhome (slaves), nguraro (‘hard’ hair), and kafir (unholy) in their descriptions of these encounters.
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