North Eastern non-local teachers make demands.
Since their petitions to be relocated to other locations were denied, teachers from outside of Kenya’s northern regions are requesting security from the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) before beginning their employment.
Because they claimed to be the target of repeated attacks by alleged al-Shabaab militants, they requested these transfers through the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet).
The presence of al-Shabaab poses major security risks to these foreign teachers, according to Moses Nthurima, the Deputy Secretary-General of Kuppet. Al-Shabaab was cited as having killed 40 teachers in the last ten years, with four of the events occurring in the previous two months.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) designates Northern Kenya as a “hard-to-staff” region, where schools frequently lack adequate staff and job advertising draw little applications.
North Eastern non-local teachers make demands
Prof. Kithure Kindiki, the Cabinet Secretary for Internal Security, was urged by Nthurima to create a special KDF unit that would be in charge of accompanying teachers across the area, especially in communities that were at risk. He emphasized that the expenditures associated with security issues shouldn’t fall on instructors.
Nthurima stated that the union has attempted to persuade the TSC to relocate these teachers, some of whom have been waiting at the commission’s offices and have not gone back to their schools in three weeks since the start of the term.
Recently, the instructors received notice that their transfer requests had been denied due to a lack of qualified replacements, and they were instructed to report to the schools for which they had been designated or face repercussions.
These educators are primarily from the counties of Mandera, Wajir, and Garissa. The TSC had earlier stated plans to redeploy instructors impacted by the de-localization strategy, however as of June 2023, only a portion of the transfer requests had been fulfilled because there weren’t enough replacements or openings at their desired sites.
Only 17,942 out of 35,959 primary school teachers who requested transfers were granted permission, while only 2,113 out of 10,967 applications for post-secondary institutions were approved.
North Eastern non-local teachers make demands.
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