The government has maintained that it will only pay BOM Teachers with TSC number.
Appearing before the National Assembly Education Cabinet Secretary Professor George Magoha and the Education Permanent Secretary Kipsang said all dully employed teachers employed by the board of Management (BOM) have already received their payments insisting that the law prohibits the government to pay non-TSC registered teachers.
The country has a teachers shortage of 125,000 teachers. To bridge the gap, the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Service Commission are required to hire additional teachers depending on the available resources.
Alternatively, Boards Of Management in all public schools are required to hire qualified teachers and to pay them according to their agreement.
Whereas this project has worked well the Ministry of Education employment policy requires BOM teachers to employ teaching staffs only if they have the capacity to pay.
The policy could be creating a huge conflict between various schools BOMs, the Government and the individual teachers.
"The burden of deciding how to get teachers is left to the headteachers, how to pay becomes a conflict between the Board of Management and the school." Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion noted.
Learning institutions are advised to employ BOM teachers based on qualification capacity. It is a reality that many schools don't lack capacity.
Omboko Milemba who is the Chairman of Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) noted that the country is duped to act like there is np money in the education sector to act and prepare Kenya to reopen schools. "Soon or later the question of health is going to compete with the question of finance, " said Milemba.
The closure of schools due to Coronavirus pandemic affected about 40,000 teachers employed by the Boards of Management in various public schools across the country.
After a persistence outcry, the government decided to intervene by paying all BOM teachers Sh 10,0000 for 6 months running from July 2020 to December this year.
"The law only allows me to spend public money on teachers as defined by various sections of the law. So the first thing we look for is the TSC number," Professor Magoha stated before the National Assembly.
The decision by the Government to pay only BOM teachers with TSC numbers leaves hanging the fate of thousands of teachers who have been offering their services without TSC numbers and whose names were removed by the Ministry of Education from the payment list.
"There are teachers who did not even have TSC numbers instead they put their national identity numbers and were expecting to be paid." Stated Magoha.
The ministry of education through Permanent Secretary Belio Kipsang says as per the number of teachers who were certified by Education Ministry and the Teachers Service Commission are the only qualified teachers approved to teach in schools.
The hard stance taken by the Ministry of Education to only pay teachers with TSC number leaves out many schools which had been depending on the services of these BOM teachers, with huge financial obligations arising from the services rendered by the teachers, not in the role of their employer.
