Teachers will go on strike if annual salary increment is not reinstated-Sossion.
By Dickson Odhiambo.
August 26, 2017.
Teachers will go on strike if annual salary increment is
not reinstated-Sossion.
THE Kenya National
Union of Teachers will mobilize its members countrywide to go on strike after
the seven-day notice they gave early this week expired without government
reinstating the annual salary increment for teachers.
Knut Secretary
General Wilson Sossion maintains that the giant teachers’ union is
contemplating mobilizing its members to down their tools if Teachers Service Commission
and the Ministry of Labour do not honor their demands of reinstating the annual
salary increment for teachers.
He says the Union’s
National Governing Council issued a seven-day strike notice last Thursday and
will have no any other option other than going on strike if reinstatement is
not done.
He says part of
their demands included reinstatement of teachers’ annual pay increment and
promotion of teachers with higher qualifications as contained in the recently
signed Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
“We are telling the
teachers’ employer which is the Teachers Service Commission and the Ministry of
Labour that we are ready to disrupt the busy scheduled education program for third
term this year if our concerns are not addressed within the timeline we have
set out,” Sossion says.
He says Knut is not
a union that gives empty threats because someone wants to raid their pay slips
and will stop everything to protect the teachers’ pay slips.
“Whoever advised
TSC is headed for a serious confrontation because this is the biggest injury
the teachers must resist at all cost,” he adds.
Meanwhile, Knut has said they will not allow the Teachers Service Commission to transfer head Teachers outside their respective counties where they were employed.
Knut Secretary
General Wilson Sossion says the move is not in order as it is a violation of
the teachers’ right to associate with their families.
Sossion says posting
and transfers of schools’ heads in schools outside their counties is inhumane
as it has resulted into separation of families.
The union boss
threatened that should the TSC continues to transfer or deploy teachers in
schools far from their home counties in December this year then the union will
take unprecedented steps of calling for another strike when schools re-open in
January next year.
“We know very well
that they are used to transferring teachers in the month of December and they
should know that no school will open come January next year if this happened
because if you touch one teacher, you touch all of us, “Sossion adds.
The secretary
general says it was unconstitutional for TSC to arrive at such decision without
the engagement of the teachers through their union.
The unionist notes that
it is a requirement by the labour laws that TSC must first consult the teachers
on matters of formulating policies that are likely to affect them.
Sossion says that in
some instances, positions within a county are advertised but when teachers
apply and succeed they are taken to other schools a move that will amounts to
destabilization of their families and already they have reports of those that
are affected by this syndrome.
ENDS:
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