KNUT reconsiders plan to paralyse national exams

The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has issued a two weeks ultimatum to the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to meet their demands, failure to which they will call for a nationwide teachers strike.

Speaking at Mwala in Machakos County, KNUT Deputy Secretary General Hesbon Otieno, said the union had reconsidered their earlier stance of paralyzing supervision of the national exams which are set to kick off later this month.

Otieno further disagreed with the government’s failure to promote teachers who had attained higher academic qualifications.

“In the industrial world if you go to school on your own volition to increase your knowledge that is applicable to the work that you are doing, you present your papers, the employer immediately recognizes the papers and in addition the employer refunds you the amount of money that you spent in your post professional studies,” Mr. Otieno said.

Teachers are demanding an immediate stop to delocalization, termination of Teacher Performance and Appraisal development (TPAD) and promotion of over 30,000 teachers.

Last week, a meeting between TSC and KNUT which had been convened in Naivasha aborted after both parties failed to agree on some of the contentious issues. The teachers union now wants a proper dialogue to address their grievances once and for all.

“What caused the meeting to have a stalemate was the issue of transfer of administrators, which we discussed to some level and we agreed that the teachers can be transferred according to how it should be done in the code of regulation of teachers,” Otieno said.