The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is quite unfair to the intern teachers it intends to literally throw under the bus. Its decision to advertise the 46,000 positions simply means that the interns will have to compete with others and yet they have held those jobs for a while.
Several months ago, the interns called off their strike to enable discussions between the TSC and the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) for them to be granted permanent and pensionable terms. They had staged a strike demanding better employment terms. Therefore, this new TSC move will be disappointing to them, as they thought they already got the jobs.
According to Kuppet, the intern teachers have diligently served for two years and thus have a binding contract with the TSC that should guarantee their confirmation.
It is for this reason that the union is opposed to the plan to once again hire the teachers competitively on permanent terms, as had been suggested by Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba, who wants those picked confirmed in their positions on January1 next year.
The TSC’s advertisement of the vacancies, reinforcing CS Ogamba’s directive to the intern teachers to apply for the jobs afresh, deals them a heavy blow. The teachers’ employer has invited applications for 6,000 new vacancies in primary schools, 39,550 in junior secondary, and 450 in senior secondary schools.
These interns, who had been promised automatic absorption since being hired at the beginning of last year, now have up to next Monday to submit their applications.
The new twist is shocking as only in August, CS Ogamba had confirmed that the 46,000 intern teachers would be confirmed and an additional 20,000 tutors recruited.
The teachers are right to feel devalued and disrespected after their sacrifice in doing their work under difficult circumstances and without proper terms of service. And to rub salt into the wound, they will have to reapply and be considered on the same terms with the newcomers. For justice to be done and seen to be done, the interns should be confirmed and any other vacancies filled with newcomers as the TSC deems fit.
