Division In Kenyan Teachers Union Over Strike Threat

By Tervil Okoko, PANA, 10 August 2000

NAIROBI, Kenya (PANA) - The head of the Kenya National Union of Teachers has disowned its members advocating nation-wide strike to oppose government's controversial plan to transfer teachers countrywide for equitable distribution of personnel.

The teacher redistribution programme, announced by education minister Kalonzo Musyoka about two months ago, is aimed at moving thousands of teachers from over-staffed districts to poorly staffed ones.

The programme is mainly expected to affect teachers in Nairobi and surrounding districts.

While the government insists on going ahead with the programme, the teaching community, especially those earmarked to be moved, is decidedly against it.

The government's offer to pay disturbance and transport allowances has done little to melt the teachers' determined hearts.

The union is divided down the middle, with one group supporting the transfers and the other diametrically opposed to it.

"No branch official has powers to organise demonstrations or call a teachers' strike. The branches (that issued the strike threat last week) acted beyond their jurisdiction and they must desist from that," the union's national chairman, John Katumanga, said.

But leaders of seven branches of the union continued to support the stand taken by some 33 branches that met in Nyeri, about 120 miles north of Nairobi, last week to issue a 10-day ultimatum on the government to rescind the transfers.

Most of the affected teachers have already received their transfer letters but, at the calling of their respective union branches, have refused to budge.

A majority of the head office officials of the union have disowned the ultimatum issued to the government to revoke the transfers or face mass protests. They term the ultimatum unconstitutional and unwise.

Backing that stance is Katumanga, who cites the union's constitution, which says in part: "No branch shall take action on any subject, which commits the union as a whole without the sanction of the national executive council."

But, Francis Ng'ang'a, acting secretary general of the union, opposes his chairman's point of view. He has instructed all the affected branches to compile a list of moved teachers and forward them to the union's headquarters, which will take the issue up with the Teachers' Service Commission.

"The union will not allow the transfers which would separate families and bring suffering to teachers, especially single parents and the sick and the aged," Ng'ang'a told a press conference early this week.

He said the union would not allow its members to move to insecure districts, such as in northern Kenya, which have been infiltrated by armed bandits from Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia.

It has been the government policy that teachers graduating from the training colleges and universities be posted to their home districts to avoid inconveniences such as transport and language barriers.

But recently it came up with the highly contentious transfer programme, arguing that there must be equitable distribution of teachers if its goal of equitable education development is to be realised.

But observers wonder where the government would get the transfer safety net funds amid a struggling economy.

Meanwhile, as the transfer row rages, the government is still faced with another showdown with the primary and secondary teachers demanding to be paid a total of 700 million US dollars, which was agreed upon in 1997 but which the government later reneged for lack of funds.

At the beginning of August, the union said teachers would bring pressure to bear on the government to implement all the phases of the massive awards before the end of the year.

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