Kenya: Teachers to Receive 50-60% Salary Increment

By Staff Writer

Teachers in Kenya are set to resume their duties this September pay hike after Supreme Court ruled in their favor in getting a salary increase of 50 to 60 percent as awarded to them by a lower court in June this year.

The move by the teachers was made to contest a court of appeal decision to uphold the award. The teachers said that they had done all they can and it was up to the court to give the final ruling. According to the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) secretary general Wilson Sossion, teachers in Kenya have been less considered despite their huge contribution in the growth of the country.

However, it was all songs and dances at the Supreme Court on Monday after the highest court in the country declined to grant the Teachers Service Commission's request to suspend the Court of Appeal order to increase the teacher’s salary. In their ruling, Supreme Court judges Willy Mutunga, Kalpana Rawal, Jackton Ojwang, Mohamed Ibrahim and Smokin Wanjala said that they had no jurisdiction to grant the TSC application because the court of appeal had done its duty according to the Kenyan law.

The Knut secretary General Sossion welcomed the decision by the Supreme Court saying teachers have been given justice by all courts in the country. “Teachers have been awarded justice and the truth has been availed”. He however added that no teacher will resume duty until the pay rise is reflected in the accounts of each one of them. Teachers and other KNUT officials who had gathered to hear the ruling cheered him on to show their solidarity.

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has however said that the teachers demands are too much as they will need ksh17 billion to provide the teachers 50-60 percent salary increment of which they said they do not have.

Civil Servants strikes have become very common in the Nation in the past five years with teachers and doctors being at the centre of it. The solutions offered by the Kenyan government are either short term or not agreeable to as they always recur.

This standoff is the latest in a long line of strikes to hit the Kenyan education sector in recent years, showing the country’s education challenges. Analysts say these challenges can be traced back to 2003, when the former government of President Mwai Kibaki introduced free primary education.

This seemed like a good idea as children from poor backgrounds could also have access education. The public schools flocked with a lot of pupils from poor backgrounds and thus an increase in the number of teachers was called for. This has however had so many repercussions as there have been little finances to cater for the teachers resulting to numerous strikes.

Students in the primary and secondary levels are the most affected as the strikes could  go up two months during the school term thus they lug behind in their studies which affects their final exams grades which are used to determine where they go next. Education in most countries in Africa has continued to suffer with the responsible bodies failing their duties. This has mostly been blamed on the corruption menace in most of these Nations.

Private schools have however sprouted almost everywhere in Kenya with the aim of making education accessible to every person in the country. Most Kenyans have shown more preference to the private learning institutions as they are competitive and you never know when the next teachers strike will be. As much as the teachers demand for increment in salary, they have been challenged to make public schools more competitive.

Kenyans may be slapped with higher taxes to raise the extra ksh17 billion to cover the teacher’s salary increment. Also being considered is cutting the development budget and using money set aside to build roads and hospitals and to equip security forces to pay the salaries ordered by the courts.  This situation explains why the government had been fighting the pay increase viciously, with the Teachers Service Commission moving to the Court of Appeal and threatening to head to the Supreme Court to block the award.

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission has expressed their concern that the pay increase for the teachers might result in agitation by other public sector workers for a pay increase.