Counties and TSC battle over hiring nursery school teachers

Meru governor Peter Munya congratulates the newly commissioned Meru county law enforcement officers on May 6,2016. The officers will help other law enforcing agencies in the county,to maintain law and order and ensure free flow of traffic in town. [PHOTO:PETER MUTHOMI/Standard]

County governments will continue to employ nursery school teachers despite objections by a constitutional commission.

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has claimed that county governments were overlapping its constitutional mandate by seeking to employ nursery teachers.

According to TSC, it had the exclusive mandate of hiring teachers in the country.

But Council of Governors (CoG) Chairman Peter Munya said in Meru that counties were exercising a constitutional mandate which placed nurseries under them.

CoG chairman accused TSC of reading the Constitution in isolation and ignoring the powers the same document placed on devolved units.

"We really have no objections to TSC employing another lot of teachers but we wonder where they will post them because ECDE centres are run by county governments," he added.

He said his own government was preparing to place over 1,000 ECDE teachers who have been on contracts on permanent and pensionable terms.

Mr Munya spoke while commissioning 56 newly hired enforcement officers who have been trained by officers from the Administration Police Training College, Kilima Chuma Campus, in Meru.

He announced that all enforcement officers inherited from the defunct local authorities would undergo paramilitary training as part of transforming the department.

Munya ordered that the county insignia be placed on the enforcement officer's cap to give them more authority.