By Augustine Oduor
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has warned teachers they would not get services at the headquarters without express clearance from the County Directors.
It emerged yesterday that at least 600 teachers visit the head office daily even after the commission recruited 47 County Directors to handle teachers’ affairs at county levels.
Speaking yesterday as he opened the County Directors’ meeting in Mombasa, Commission Secretary Gabriel Lengoiboni said any emerging issues must be brought to the attention of the directors first.
He said it is not encouraging to see teachers come to the head office to make follow ups on delayed correspondence, salary deductions, study leaves, delayed pensions and processing of transfer requests.
“We want these services to be offered at the county level. We have to reverse this and strive to serve our clients at the county level. Only special cases should be referred to Nairobi,” he said.
Lengoiboni said the essence of devolving some of the services to the county level was to bring services closer to the people to lessen time wastage in travels to the Nairobi.
“We want all teachers to get all their grievances addressed as quickly as possible so that they return to work. And this means that they must recognise the directors and have confidence in them to solve their issues,” he said. He challenged the directors to stick to the commission’s service charter, noting that plans are underway to make service delivery at the counties feasible.
“If teachers are supposed to get a reply in two weeks, make sure it happens so. All investigation must be thorough and decisions made based on findings. That is how you will build confidence in teachers,” he said.
Key setbacks
Speaking at the forum, directors identified stereotypes as one of the key challenges they have had to fight even as they sought to deliver services to teachers. They narrated how they have had to avoid conflict with some State officials in their areas of jurisdiction over what they termed ‘perceived conflict of roles.’
“During the examinations, I had to accommodate some of the officials because this was a national exercise that I did not want to interfere with. But I will not allow that to happen next time,” said one of the directors.
There has been a growing disquiet on working relations between the TSC County Directors and those from the Ministry of Education. Education PS George Godia deployed the County Directors of Education days after TSC recruited its staff and deployed them to the counties.
Even after the TSC and the ministry outlined the roles of these officials, there have many tuff wars reported from various counties.
A senior official from the Kenya School of Government, Gerald Wandera, took the directors through conflict management and asked them to enhance their public relations. “It must not always have to be a fight in conflict resolution,” he said.
Wandera said the directors be accommodative even as they execute their roles. Lengoiboni urged the directors to work as a team with other Government officials within their jurisdiction.
The directors, however, asked the commission to buy them vehicles to facilitate their movement within the counties.
“We already asked each director to specify the car model that best suites their county. Once that is done, we shall make plans to have all directors get cars,” said Lengoiboni.
