The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has cited a lack of funds as the main impediment to hiring more teachers in both Primary and Secondary Schools. The current deficit of teachers in schools stands at 155,605 and there are nearly 300,000 unemployed teachers. While appearing before the parliamentary committee on education, TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia said the national treasury is to blame given that they haven’t availed the requested funds. She said the commission had requested for sufficient cash to hire 20,000 teachers annually but only Kshs 2.5 billion has been availed and that can only cater for employment of 5000 teachers.
She said the small number of recruited teachers makes it tough during distribution, “If everytime we are given five thousand teachers annually, we don’t even know how to distribute them,” she said. The Committee, however, accepted that the bulk of the responsibility now rests with the national treasury and that the plan by TSC to employ 20,000 teachers in four years to close the gap is viable ,”We want the CEO and education ministry to know we have accepted the plan to employ 20,000 teachers and the ball is with the national treasury and we’ll follow up the matter,” said Tinderet MP Julius Melly.
The issue of teachers’ promotion was also raised, with Committee members voicing their concerns that promotion is being done according to ethnicity. “Nowadays promotions in different regions are done based on ethnic groups. If you are a person from that particular area then you are unlikely to get promoted and the ones from another area will be promoted,” said Emuhaya MP Omboko Milemba. The TSC boss denied the allegations on ethnic aligned promotions. She was accompanied by Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed, who said the situation of teachers’ insecurity and availability in Wajir is bout sorted out, “There is an exercise that is ongoing of recruiting teachers for Wajir, we agreed we’ll get curriculum assistance,” she said.