Tension is simmering between Early Childhood Development (ECD) teachers and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) after over 700 tutors from Nakuru County made fresh demands of permanent employment.
The ECD teachers led by their spokesperson, Margret Wambui, yesterday demanded that TSC gives them permanent employment immediately now that county governments had not hired them as expected.
“TSC should employ us on permanent basis like our counterparts in primary and secondary schools because county governments meant to hire us were stopped,” Wambui said.
She said that they had suffered for long as they depended on parents to earn their meagre living which they claimed can hardly sustain them, especially with the rising cost of living.
They asked the government to consider hiring them on permanent and pensionable terms as they are the people who lay foundations of learners in the country.
“Unless our children are given the right foundation, they won’t perform even as they go to primary school and class eight,” she noted.
They threatened to mobilise their colleagues from across the country to paralyse operations in institutions if their cries are ignored.
They further alleged that the teachers’ employer was using the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) to frustrate their bid to be absorbed through court cases.
“KNUT recently filed a case in Nairobi opposing hiring of the ECD teachers by the county governments leaving us at cross-roads,” said Wambui.
The teachers warned that they were not ready to continue suffering as a result of the tag of war between TSC and the county governments.
TSC boss Gabriel Lengoiboni recently warned county governments against hiring the nursery school teachers, saying the mandate was now vested in TSC.
He insisted that recruitment, promotions and remuneration of teachers was a preserve of TSC.