Former General-Secretary of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Wilson Sossion has denied being part of the National Education Union (NEU) formation.
Sossion and other old officials have been accused by KNUT Secretary General Collins Oyuu of staging the breakaway.
“It’s wrong. The world is not ending. if you lose an election, just accept and let others work,” Oyuu stated about his predecessor.
But speaking on Wednesday, August 11, the ODM nominated Member of Parliament refuted claims adding that he should not be associated with activities within the teaching service after quitting KNUT.
“Teachers are rebelling. Splinters are formed to fill vacuums. I left Knut and shouldn’t be associated with activities within the teaching service,” the nominated MP told Nation.
Sossion however embraced its idea calling on other teachers unions to collapse and operate under one entity as presented by the new splinter union whose motto is “Service, Justice, and Unity.”
NEU whose headquarters are in Nairobi seeks to bring all teachers on board, running the recruitment exercise from pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary levels including teachers in special needs and private school teachers who’ve been isolated by the current unions.
The formation of the splinter union is said to have been majorly informed by the failure of the current ones to champion the teachers’ rights with non-monetary CBA signed in July by Knut and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) beating the top listing of why NEU was formed.
The CBA which froze teachers’ salaries increase for 4 years from the financial year 2021-2025 has been highly criticiced by union members
with NEU seeking to address salaries increment for all teachers, reduction of union fees from 1.8 per cent to one per cent, and furthermore address all teachers’ issues without any form of bias.
The union gives teachers full powers to elect their representatives and insists, not through delegates. NEU also wants all classroom teachers to earn the same salary as the school administrators, which is likely to spark a breakaway of current unions.
Currently, the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet) commands the highest number of members (130,000) while the former giant union KNUT has only 15,000 members left out of 187,000 two years ago.
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