Teachers poised for strike
Some secondary school teachers, who were recruited by the government in April this year, claim they have not been receiving their salaries and hardship allowance since April.
They have since threatened to stop working until the government pays them their dues.
Spokesperson for the affected teachers, Jameson Botie, confirmed that the teachers have written the Ministry of Education informing it of their intention to hold a sit-in from November 1.
In April this year, the government announced the recruitment of 500 teachers, 397 of them were deployed in the same month while the remaining were deployed in June 2019.
But Botie said some of the teachers are owed arrears for three months, while others are yet to be paid despite the government claiming that it had money for the teachers’ salary.
“We have been following with our Ministry [of Education] regarding when they will pay us the money but we are getting unsatisfactory answers. We are being told to be patient because our colleagues took three or four years before they received their salaries. But this is not on because most of us have accumulated debts which we need to service,” Botie said.
Apart from the three months’ salary arrears, Botie said most of the teachers are not getting their K10, 000 rural allowance, hence they want the government to come out with clear explanations.
But in an interview, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Education Science and Technology Justin Saidi, said the government is putting in place mechanism for paying the teachers in time.
“Some of the teachers we employed were working in some sectors, so we waited for reports from their respective schools if indeed they have started working. We cannot start paying somebody when we do not know whether he has reported for work or not,” Saidi said.
He said that the government is not failing to pay the teachers their arrears, arguing that in the past, the Ministry has been able to pay outstanding arrears for 10 years, hence it cannot fail to pay the teachers their three months arrears.
