Taxpayers to Spend Billions in Paying Salaries for Teachers

The government of Kenya will have to spend an additional 54 billion shillings to cater for the pay of teachers in the next five years.

The came into effect after the Teachers Service Commission and the teachers’ unions KNUT and KUPPET struck a deal in which teachers’ salaries were to be increased as from the 1st of July 2016.

The two-day meeting took place behind closed doors at a Naivasha Hotel on 24th to 25th of October 2016 and when they emerged, it was all smiles for the union officials for the deal had been reached.

In the new deal, the lowest paid teacher at a primary school level will having 27,195 shillings in their salary account while a school principal will be the highest paid teacher with a salary of 131,380 shillings per month.

The teacher entry P1 has also been scrapped under the new deal and replaced with B5 and more than 100,000 P1 teachers automatically promoted to job group H. The back and forth fight been the TSC and the unions for teachers has been ongoing for years with the government being on the receiving end for neglecting the issues surrounding teachers through making of unfounded demands.

All eyes are now directed to the government of the day to see whether what has been agreed upon will be implemented or teachers will have to again down their tools and venture into the streets as it the norm to compel their employers to keep the promise.

Wilson Sossion, the secretary general for KNUT has already warned against failure to implement the bargaining agreement. “We shall register the bargaining agreement before the labor court within the next 14 days and once this is done, it will caution against non-implementation,” he said.

The move to raise the teachers’ salary is expected to push the country’s wage bill even further given that it stands at 23 percent at the moment.

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