TSC now removes Sossion, Milemba from teachers roll

Code of Regulations dictate that teachers who seek elective posts and hold trade union positions must retire from service [File| Standard]

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has de-registered top officials of the teachers' unions who have joined politics.

The Commission this week wrote to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Secretary General Wilson Sossion and Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) chairman Omboko Milemba, informing them that they are no longer teachers.

“The commission has decided to terminate your services as a teacher with effect from January 15, 2018,” said TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia in the letter signed by JM Maundu on Monday written to Mr Sossion. “It has been noted that you were nominated as a Member of Parliament yet the Commission has not received your resignation or retirement letter.”

Regulation 187 (1) and (2) of the Code of Regulations for Teachers dictates that teachers who seek elective positions and hold trade union positions must resign or retire from service. In fact, the deregistration renders them non-eligible for leadership at the teachers unions.

This decision puts the relationship between TSC and the unionists in a precarious position as the law requires that you have to be teacher to vie for any position in the unions.

Bomet Central MP Ronald Tunoi has also faced the axe. Sossion is an ODM Nominated MP, while Milemba is Emuhaya MP, a seat he won on the Amani National Congress party ticket.

Already, there is another battle before Employment and Labour Relations Court in relation to the same issue - whether Sossion and Milemba among other trade unionists should continue holding their positions and at the same time earn as law makers.

Labour Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie gave a notice to all the unionists who had been elected to Parliament to vacate their offices.

In the gazette notice, she intended that Milemba, Sossion and Union of Kenya Civil Servants Secretary General Tom Odege would relinquish their positions for a new crop of leaders to take over.

But they got a reprieve after Justice Nelson Abuodha temporarily suspended the implementation of the notice.

TSC first sent termination notices to the three on December 14 last year. Sossion then replied saying that his nomination by ODM was meant to represent workers in Parliament.

 “While I acknowledge the fact that I took oath of office as a nominated Member of Parliament, the nomination into the particular office was to represent workers and their interest (sic) in the National Assembly as a specially recognized category,” Sossion wrote on January 9, in response to TSC’s notice of termination.

He claimed the notice would only affect those who actively sought elective seats and not nominations.