Kenyan teachers fault SRC over planned job evaluations

NAIROBI: The two teachers’ unions have rejected the planned job evaluation by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) arguing it is meant to take away their ‘hard negotiated’ pay under the guise of rationalisation.

Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) and Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers (Kuppet) officials Thursday said that their employer, the Teachers Service Commission (TRC), and not SRC, is best suited to do the evaluation.

Kuppet Secretary General Akelo Misori said a teacher’s job is well known and faulted another exercise that seeks to “state the obvious.”

“We know that a teacher has 35 lessons, works 24 hours and has no holiday. What else do they want to know,” said Misori.

He said unless the SRC provides a template for the job evaluation, teachers will collect a million signatures to send SRC home for duplicating roles.

Knut Secretary General Wilson Sossion said TSC is an independent commission and that the existence of SRC does not displace the mandate of TSC.

Mr Sossion said they will not entertain evaluations that negate the gains achieved through Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA).

“We want to help you, but you must consult us on this exercise,” said Sossion.

An official from SRC, Daniel Ogutu, said they will consult all stakeholders during the exercise.

Sossion said the scheme of service given by TSC is enough to track the performance of teachers in the country, and that the job evaluation was irrelevant.

TERMS OF SERVICE

“We want the job evaluation template given to us first. We already have the scheme of service and we suspect that the job evaluation will be used to water down our demands for better terms of service,” Sossion said.

Sossion said the employment of 5,000 teachers annually is a drop in the ocean and cannot be used to justify job evaluation, and that a class is supposed to have 40 students and below, but this was not the case in most public schools.

Knut Chairman Mudzo Nzili said the Government either plans to use the proposed job evaluation to deny teachers a pay rise or or intends to use as a political tool in the 2017 General Election.

‘We know that TSC is a bigger commission compared to SRC and we wonder why the latter intends to interfere with teachers’ affairs. We suspect that job evaluation for teachers will be completed by 2016 and used for 2017 elections,” Nzili said.

Misori said: “We feel that TSC which is the employer should bring job evaluation and not SRC. Job evaluation for teachers is different from that of a banker or a clerical officer. How much does SRC know about teachers?”

Meanwhile, the unions reiterated their call to teachers facing security threats at their workstations to quit.

Sossion said he should not be victimised for speaking the truth and urged the Government to protect both teachers and learners to avoid a repeat of what was witnessed at Garissa University College in April.

“I repeat my call that any teacher who feels insecure should walk out of those areas. I was criticised when I made this statement following a terror attack in Mandera, but this was confirmed by the Garissa university attack. As we speak, two people involved in that attack still cannot be traced,” he said.