Teachers on Saturday took the stage on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Telegram, demanding their salary payments. The Board of Management teachers started the day with the support of key politicians including Babu Owino among others.
The Embakasi Member of parliamentary regretted that BOM teachers were languishing in poverty calling for the CS Magoha to consider the case important and urgent. Former Kakamega senator Dr Boni Khalwale also called Education CS to come out clear on this matter of BOM Teachers.
The Ministry of Education has been promising teachers that they would be paid but no hopes seem to emerge. The BOM teachers have not been paid since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Kenya. With bills to pay and families to take care of, this group of teachers have undergone stress and depression.
President Uhuru Kenyatta had promised that money would be disbursed for the payment of teachers. It was then announced by the CS Professor Magoha that that money had been sent to schools only to be rumoured that it had been reversed back to the Ministry.
The Chief Administrative Secretary Mr Zachary Kinuthia later cleared the rumours on his Facebook page saying that the money was not reversed back to the Ministry but it was undergoing the procedural process that is required promising teachers that they would get the money that week but nothing happened.
With many false and contradicting statements from the ministry of education, it is not clear what the fate of these suffering teachers hold. Depending on the many scandals of money meant for Kenyans being looted, teachers now fear that perhaps a new scandal is looming.
We have heard of teachers being locked out of their houses, some turning offices into bedrooms, family breakups and suicide by some teachers might not be too far related to the difficult moments that they are facing during this period.
Who is fooling who? Teachers are asking.
