Kenyan teachers, civil servants to enjoy new medical scheme

Written By:Diana Okwemo/KNA,    Posted: Sat, Jun 25, 2011

The minister further announced that all house allowances will also be rationalized across the board in order to attract high level caliber civil servants to areas away Nairobi.(Photo Africannewsonline)

The Government has pledged to roll out a new medical scheme for civil servants and teachers by August this year.

Public Service minister Dalmas Otieno says the current medical scheme to public servants is erratic hence the need to make it market friendly to enable them to access quality Medicare.

Speaking in Mombasa while officially closing the 36th Annual Conference of the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KSSHA), the minister said the lowest cadre of civil servants will be entitled to 500,000 shillings in form of inpatient, 50,000 for outpatient and 150,000 shillings in form of death benefits while 30,000 shillings for funeral expenses as from 1st August this year.

Minister Otieno also added that a new hardship allowance criteria will soon be rolled out where public servants and teachers serving in extremely hardship areas will earn Ksh 10,000 while those in moderately hardship parts of the country will earn Ksh 5,000 as the minimum.

High achievers award

Otieno further announced that all house allowances will also be rationalized across the board in order to attract high level caliber civil servants to areas away Nairobi.

"We want to encourage senior civil servants and teachers to move out of Nairobi and serve in the soon to be introduced county level of governance without subjecting them to the agony of losing part of their house allowance," said the Minister.

The Minister also unveiled a scheme of rewarding high achievers in the public service and teaching fraternity so that high performers are not confined to the same job groups due to bureaucratic systems of promotions in the public service.

"A  scheme to recognize high achievers in the public service in on the cards, and it will come up with mechanisms of recognizing good workers and teachers so that they are fast tracked in promotions without ending up as managers", said Mr. Otieno.

He also announced that the Government will start a revolving fund to enable public servants to access funds for further education in addition to those from the higher education loans board.

"Public servants will be facilitated by these funds to enable them acquire personal and professional development through training and further education," said the Minister.

The Minister lamented that some teachers were earning as low as Ksh 1,000 as take home pay after taking numerous loans from various lending institutions including banks.

"We want these lending institutions to bear the same pain being subjected to these teachers by coming up with a policy where the loaners will be forced to reschedule repayment by civil servants and teachers to cushion them pecuniary embarrassment," said the Minister.

The ceremony was also attended by KSSHA Chairman Cleophas Tirop, TSC Chairman Ibrahim Hussein and the Director of Education and Tertiary Institution, Mr. Robert Masese.

Missing FPE funds

Elsewhere, a Parents lobby group has decided to appear before the Supreme Court to pray for orders from the highest court in the country compelling the Finance Minister, Uhuru Kenyatta to factor an extra Ksh 11.6Billion shillings in the budget for the Ministry of Education for the recruitment of 10,000 Early Childhood Education (ECD) teachers and another 28,000 for both primary and secondary schools.

Kenya Parents Association Secretary General, Musau Ndunda lamented that teacher shortage in Kenyan learning institutions stood at 70,000 and his organization has decided to take advantage of the new constitutional dispensation which recognizes education as a basic human right to compel the Minister to address the teacher shortage by allocating extra funds.

Mr. Ndunda who was speaking on the sidelines of the 36th Annual Conference of the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association (KSSHA) in Mombasa further disclosed that the Treasury Report on missing FPE funds was flawed and erroneous.

"We have scrutinized accounts from the Ministry of education and discovered that what was actually lost was 8.6 billion and not 4.2 billion as announced by the finance minister recently," said Mr. Ndunda.

He said that the figure announced by the Ministry of finance as the total amount of money missing from the FPE kitty was just a tip of the ice berg and called for a forensic investigation by the CID to unearth the real magnitude of the problem.

Mr. Ndunda said although the ministry has indicated that over 500 people have been identified as culpable in the theft of the FPE funds, "we have cheques and other documentary evidence to show that more people abetted and perpetrated the theft of these funds ," said the Association Chair.

He further added that the schools and other phantom institutions where the money was wired should also be rounded up and charged with the theft of FPE funds.