By Stephen Makabila

Nairobi, Kenya: The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut), could be a thorn in the flesh of the Jubilee administration owing to its passion to fight for the welfare of its over 250,000 membership.

Over the 15 years, successive Knut leadership has remained restless, engaging Government in tussles over terms of teachers.

Until Wednesday, the Knut leadership under national chairman Wilson Sossion was awaiting the lapse of a 14-day notice issued to the Government over the move by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to scrap hardship allowances in some parts of the country.

But TSC moved first on Wednesday evening and agreed to reinstate the allowances in two weeks. Sossion told The Standard on Sunday the union will be waiting to see whether TSC honours its pledge.

“As a union, we work and respect the Government of the day, but it has also to respect legal agreements signed with us and honour them, as well as being sensitive to the welfare of the country’s education sector,” added Sossion.

The scrapped hardship allowances were part of the Collective Bargain Agreement reached between TSC and Knut in 1997, and which has been in contention for the last 15 years, with setbacks on allowances especially coming in from the TSC (Remuneration of Teachers Amendment order 2003) gazetted in the Kenya Gazette supplement Number 17 of February 21, 2003, as legal notice Number 16 of 2003.

In the 1997 agreement, the Government undertook to improve the teachers’ remuneration over a period of five years, and hence, teachers were required to end the strike then. The agreement contained a schedule “A” indicating how the teachers salary increment would escalate in percentage over the five-year period. Schedule “B” indicated how the allowances, namely; house, medical, responsibility, special/hardship and commuter would be improved over the period that was to end in year 2001.

Unfortunately, the Government failed to live up to its promise and in 2002 following a disagreement with Knut, the National Conciliation Committee was formed and Knut was engaged in further negotiations. 

Sossion says it was agreed that the teachers’ salaries as reflected in the Teachers’ Remuneration Order of 1997 would be paid over a period of ten years ending in 2012. The Government proceeded to honour the payments of salaries as per schedule “A”, while leaving out the allowances in schedule “B” in suspended animation.

Pending issues

Luckily for teachers, in a report tabled before a parliamentary select committee that was chaired by the then Mutito MP Kiema Kilonzo on January 3, 2012 the House urged the Education minister to degazette the TSC (Remuneration of Teachers Amendment order 2003) gazetted in the Kenya Gazette supplement Number 17 of February 21, 2003, as legal notice Number 16 of 2003. This would set the stage for the award of the Sh25 billion allowances to the teachers on top of pay increment.

Meanwhile, pending Issues Knut wants Jubilee government to sort out include: Effect promotion of teachers, commence negotiations on new terms of service, formulation of Code of Regulation for teachers.

Implementation of the medical scheme for teachers by NHIF, release proposed Sh15 billion to hire 40,000 teachers in primary and secondary schools in the coming financial year.

Knut also wants the Government to release Sh7 billion to hire 25,000 EDC teachers in the 2013/14 financial year.