Crisis looms In JSS As Intern Teachers Plan To Fo On Strike
Crisis Looms in Junior Secondary School ahead of school reopening next week as Intern Teachers plan to go on strike.
The 21,550 intern teachers are demanding for permanent and pensionable terms after completion of internship period.
The second group of Grade 6 learners are set to Junior Secondary School. The ground is shaky following threats from the intern teachers to go on strike from Monday, January 8 2024.
According to the strike notice issued by JSS Interim Secretary General Daniel Murithi, the 21,550 intern teachers are demanding permanent and pensionable terms following the expiry of their one-off 11-month contract issued in February last year.
“Subject to the provisions of Article 41 of the Constitution and Article 41 of the Employment Act, we hereby seek to notify the above party on the strike and downing of tools beginning January 8, 2024, until the government, through TSC, addresses the issue in contention as per our legal demands,” the strike notice reads.
The teachers said the industrial action is a last resort, having exhausted all reconciliatory and legal mechanisms to solve the employment dispute.
“We remain with only one option of downing our working tools,” they said.
They said that the strike is bound to continue and shall not stop at all costs even if there is coercion, interdiction and threats. Confirmation into permanent and pensionable terms is the only answer.
The strike notice comes despite a pending court case filed by The Forum for Good Governance and Human Rights.
The Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) issued interim orders in December binding the intern teachers to their previous contracts with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) pending issuance of further directions on the matter on March 7, 2024.
In the suit, The Forum for Good Governance and Human Rights protested the deployment of duly trained, certified, qualified and registered teachers as interns.
The Forum argued that hiring teachers in such a manner contravenes the Constitution and fails to place learners on required standard of learning.
Among the contentious clauses in the contract is that the internship is non-remunerative but comes with a Sh20,000 monthly stipend.
Another clause states that the internship is a one-off non-renewable programme running for 11 months from February 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023.
On December 17, President William Ruto, however, assured the interns of employment once they serve for two years.
He said internships are part of the learning on-the-job process, but the teachers would be absorbed on pensionable terms after the two-year period.
But in a statement on January 2, Murithi said the purported two-year internship policy at play “is non-existent and illegal, and such claims from the president should be treated as propaganda and amount to contempt of public trust and abuse of the presidential office.”
He further claimed that TSC was pushing the intern teachers to renew the non-renewable contracts “without any TSC circular, which is the official way of TSC communications.”
The teachers have also lamented that they have worked for a year without proper employment terms, despite being overworked.
The intern teachers argue that with this kind of workload, it’s ridiculous for TSC to intimidate them into renewing the non-renewable contracts.
They further claim that the workload will compromise the quality of education by way of teachers taking on too much work.
“Failure to confirm the interns into PnP terms will amount to a deliberate attempt by the government to kill and burry the educational transformation intentions of CBC,” Murithi said.
