Thursday, June 27, 2013

Schools strike drama as court issues order

Updated Wednesday, June 26th 2013 at 22:04 GMT +3


By AUGUSTINE ODUOR
The government Wednesday evening obtained a court order compelling teachers’ unions to the negotiating table over a crippling nationwide strike.
The Industrial Court order secured by the TeachersService Commission ( TSC) was the culmination of dramatic events Wednesday that took top Education officials to State House, Nairobi.
In a further development last night, President Kenyatta summoned Cabinet secretaries Jacob Kaimenyi (Education), Kazungu Kambi (Labour) and Henry Rotich (National Treasury) to a meeting at State House to discuss the crisis.
In a paid-up advertisement published elsewhere in this paper, the teachers’ employment agency has served summonses on the two unions to appear at the Industrial Court tomorrow. “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT the application be and is hereby certified as urgent and heard exparte in the first instance; Interpartes hearing on 28th June 2013 at 9.00a.m,” said the order issued by the deputy registrar.
And in Parliament, Senators clashed over the government’s response to the public school crisis, which is in its second week, during an adjournment Motion to discuss the strike.
The debate veered off into a showdown between Senators from the ruling Jubilee Coalition and the opposition CORD on whether the laptops project should be abandoned to divert funds to teachers.
Earlier in the day, Cabinet secretaries Jacob Kaimenyi (Education), Kazungu Kambi (Labour) and Henry Rotich (National Treasury) and TSC secretary Gabriel Lengoiboni held court at Deputy President William Ruto’s offices.
Important people
Also in attendance for the lengthy meeting were TSC commissioner Cleopas Tirop and chairperson of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission Sarah Serem. Ruto was not in the meeting.
The Standard established that the meeting explored various ways of ending the strike. The team later left Ruto’s office boardroom to another meeting at State House where they were expected to brief the President on the day’s progress.
“We were kept waiting to meet the President for about two hours but we did not meet him. Instead, the Attorney General Githu Muigai came and briefed us on the developments at the court,” said one of the senior officials who attended the meeting.
Back at TSC, a consultative meeting failed to kick off because Lengoiboni was not present at the boardroom. The meeting to be chaired by Joseph Obonyo from Public Service Commission was to bring together SRC and the two teachers’ union.
Kuppet officials who turned up for the meeting left because they did not see “important people” around the table.
Knut boycotted the meeting terming it “fruitless and lacking solution to teachers demands.”
Reports however indicate that the government is considering a set of offers to teachers in an effort to end the ongoing strike.
Part of this is a proposal to harmonise commuter allowance to the level of civil servants at a cost of Sh11.5 billion.
Also being considered is the introduction of leave allowance to all teachers at cost of some Sh1.4 billion. A well-placed source who is privy to the proposals said the State is also mulling over the implementation of medical allowance. “ TSC is already in talks with the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) and they are considering three options that teachers should agree on,” said the source.
Divert funds
But Knut national chairman Wilson Sossion yesterday said teachers now want their full medical allowances given to them and that it should not be diverted to any health provider.
“We want the money to be given to us so that we can decide where we can get the medical attention,” said Nyamu.
Speaking at the Kenya Education Management Institute, Kaimenyi said the State has set aside Sh3.6 billion to recruit 10,000 teachers.
But even as the government made frantic efforts to end the strike, it maintained a hard-line stand that the legal notice 534 of 1997 claimed by Knut has been overtaken by events.
Sossion however said there was no need to have a CBA with the teachers’ employer because the agreements are binding as the teacher employer and senior government officials signed them. “All salary agreements negotiated in public sector are gazzetted and must not necessarily be registered by Industrial Court,” said Sossion.
He said only salary agreements in private sector and parastatals are registered at the court for protection.
Wednesday’s events played out a script that State officials alluded to at a meeting with the parliamentary Education committee on Monday when Knut announced the strike.
Salaries and Remuneration Commission commissioner Isaiah Kubai had told MPs that the Government would move to court to compel the two unions to renegotiate the disputed deal. In Parliament, Cord allied Senators pressed the government to drop the “ambitious” laptop project for which the Treasury has allocated Sh54 billion and divert the funds to pay teachers. But members of the ruling coalition accused their colleagues of capitalising on the teachers strike to fight the laptop project and gain political capital.
 “I am shocked that even former ministers who were with me in the Cabinet are now debating the teachersstrike as if it is something new,” said Senator Beth Mugo.
She was referring to contributions by Senators James Orengo, Moses Wetangula and Anyang Ngong’o who served in the previous grand coalition Cabinet.
Orengo had said the teachers’ strike would be used as a barometer to measure the Jubilee Government’s leadership credentials.

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