Turning State House into TSC teacher hiring department preposterous

Teachers Service Commission headquarters[Courtesy]

What happens when the office constitutionally responsible for employing teachers is no longer the office actually deciding who gets employed? That is the uncomfortable question raised by the Speaker of the National Assembly’s recent remarks.

The Speaker alleged that he takes some Members of Parliament to State House, where they collect employment letters for teachers. He further alleged that some MPs sell those opportunities to members of the public for as much as Sh400,000.

These are extraordinary allegations. If true, they point to something more serious: The possible subversion of a constitutional institution and the return of the political patronage that the 2010 Constitution was designed to dismantle.

Article 237 of the Constitution establishes the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and gives it responsibility for recruiting and employing teachers, assigning them to public institutions, promoting and transferring them, exercising disciplinary control over them and terminating their employment.

This was deliberate. The framers of the 2010 Constitution created independent commissions to prevent public power from being concentrated in political hands. Article 249 provides that independent commissions are subject only to the Constitution and the law and are not subject to the direction or control of any person or authority.

There is therefore a clear line between political representation and constitutional authority.

MPs have every right to advocate for their constituents. They can lobby for more teachers and better schools. But deciding which individual gets a teaching job belongs to the TSC.

If teachers are being recruited through State House or individual politicians rather than through the TSC’s established processes, this is not simply political interference. It is the exercise of constitutional authority by people who do not possess it.

The alleged Sh400,000 price tag makes the matter even more disturbing.

Imagine a young Kenyan who has spent years training to become a teacher, registered with the TSC and repeatedly applied for vacancies. They are told recruitment is based on qualifications and available vacancies, only to discover that someone else got the job because they knew a politician—or could raise hundreds of thousands of shillings.

A public job should be earned through merit and qualification, not purchased through political connections. If the Speaker’s allegations are substantiated, the conduct may implicate serious criminal and anti-corruption offences. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations should establish the facts, including whether public offices have been abused and whether money has changed hands in exchange for employment.

But there is a bigger issue that the President must confront. The President’s obligation is not to run independent institutions. It is to protect the constitutional architecture that makes their independence possible. State House should not become an alternative recruitment office for the TSC. The Presidency should make it unequivocally clear that the Commission must recruit teachers independently and transparently. If the country needs more teachers, the government should provide the resources required to employ them.

This becomes particularly dangerous as Kenya approaches another election. Control over public employment is a powerful form of political patronage. An MP who can promise a constituent a teaching job possesses access to a state resource that can create political loyalty and dependence.

That is precisely the politics the 2010 Constitution sought to leave behind.

Kenyans created independent commissions because our history showed the dangers of allowing political power to determine every aspect of public life. The independence of the TSC is therefore not an inconvenience. It is a constitutional safeguard. The President should protect it. Parliament should respect it. MPs should stop treating public employment as constituency patronage. And the TSC must exercise the independence the Constitution gives it.