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Hiring Unfair, Say Teachers
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- Published on Tuesday, 14 August 2007 17:26
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The Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) officials claimed the final list released by Gucha district education office on Friday contained strange names replacing applicants that the district education board had short-listed. Led by the branch executive secretary, Mr Isaiah Nyariki, the unionists said that the final list showed teachers who graduated in 1999 to 2000, scrapping those who were short-listed by board.
The new list left out candidates who graduated in 1996 to 1998, who had priority during the hiring, said Mr Nyariki. He added: "We suspect that money has exchanged hands between the officers, which has led to the scrapping of the original list." The unionist urged the Teachers Service Commission to nullify the recruitment and call for a fresh one. The officials threatened to mobilise teachers to go on strike unless a new recruitment was carried out.
The Knut national treasurer, Mr Fred Ontere, also joined his colleagues in demanding the nullification of the recruitment, insisting that order had to be followed. He asked why the education office scrapped the original list and termed the act as uncouth and one which could not be tolerated by teachers. "We must monitor the order right from who graduated earlier than the other," he said.
However, education officer Gichiru Mutulilu disputed the claims and maintained that the list he produced was of genuine applicants. He denied that the names were changed, adding that the union was interfering with his office unnecessarily. Mr Ontere also appealed to TSC to reconsider its stand in centralising teacher recruitment, which, he claimed, had been localised and marred by corruption.
If recruitment was handled by TSC, then complaints from members of the community protesting against teachers recruited outside their community would be a thing of the past, he said. In Nakuru, the district education board has ratified the names of new teachers hired in the municipality. The board said it had approved those selected. The outgoing municipal education officer, Mr Richard Nyongesa, said those who qualified had met all the requirements. Mr Nyongesa has been promoted to the post of an assistant director of education to be based at the ministry's headquarters.
