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Ongeri urges for calm over teachers' recruitment

Details

Published on Thursday, 30 June 2011 19:35

Embattled Education Minister Prof. Sam Ongeri advised unions to desist from giving conditions to the government over teachers' employment

Education minister Prof. Sam Ongeri has advised teachers' trade unions to stop giving the government conditions over the confirmation to permanent terms and recruitment of intern teachers.

The Minister disclosed that the teachers' demands were not factored into this year's national budget.

Presiding over Moi Gesusu High School Education Day in Masaba South district, Ongeri assured the teachers that the Education Ministry will explore ways to tackle the issues.

He however accused them of being ungrateful for what the government had done to improve their welfare including, salary increases and payment of retired teachers whose dues had not been catered for from the 1997 Collective Bargain Agreement.

Form six level P1 teachers had been promoted to be at bar with their colleagues, added the minister.

The Ministry had moved an amendment in Parliament, revealed Ongeri, to ensure the Teachers Service Commission did not abdicate its salary determination obligation to the new Salary and Remuneration Commission.

On calls that he should step aside following the alleged 4.2 billion shillings scam at his Ministry, Ongeri maintained that he will not take responsibility on matters he did not sanction.

He told individual officers who might have misappropriated the funds to own up, urging his detractors to read and understand an audit report on the same instead of delving into baseless claims.

The region's Kenya National Union of Teachers officials and school principals who spoke at the occasion expressed satisfaction over utilization of funds allocated for revamping schools' infrastructure.

They defended Ongeri against theft of the funds and called for investigations to expose the real culprits.

Kiyiapi's defense

Meanwhile senior Education Ministry officials and the Criminal Investigation Department are compiling a list of all schools that received Free Primary Education Funds between the year 2005 and 2010 to establish how the claimed 4.2 billion shillings went missing.

Education Ministry Permanent Secretary Prof. James Ole Kiyiapi said the list will them be compared to data from banks to establish how much each school got and the schools which did not get any money.

Defending himself from the allegations which link him to the loss of funds in his ministry, Kiyiapi said the probe would not have been done at a better time than this saying no claims had been made before.

He reiterated that he was not to blame for the loss of the funds as he was not the permanent secretary at the time the funds got lost.

"I want to repeat this to all Kenyans that I am an innocent person. I don't know and was not at the ministry when the funds were being misappropriated. But let me put it clear that the investigations are at top gear to verify who was behind the scam," he noted.

He went on, "I am the person who has brought reforms in the education sector and the calls for me to step aside are baseless. If they want a reformist to step aside then what was the need for me to be there in the first place?"

The PS noted that they had liaised with the officials from the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC) who were helping the officials from his ministry with the investigations and an official statement on who misused the funds would be released soon.

He urged the media to provide facts and not draw a conclusion on who and how the funds were lost.

"Why should the media always rely on rumors and not facts why delivering information to the public. It is as is they have come into a conclusion that the minister and I are to blame for the loss whereas we are innocent since the relevant departmental heads were responsible," he noted.

The PS was speaking yesterday at Marmanet Secondary School in Laikipia West while officially opening a Sh 3.5m multipurpose hall built through funds contributed by parents and the Iranian government.

He noted that the withdrawal by donor from funding the free primary education would not in any way affect the education system adding that the donor funding only accounts for five percent which the government would source from elsewhere.