- Interns will now wait for five months to be offered permanent and pensionable contracts.
- Teachers are citing the JSS hiring as reason for strike.
National Treasury CS John Mbadi has retracted his earlier communication on Junior Secondary School teachers recruitment, clarifying there is a budget to hire them.
Speaking to the Star on phone, Mbadi clarified that the government plans to employ JSS teachers currently on internship at a budget of Sh18.3 billion.
The CS said the conversion of the 46,000 teachers to permanent and pensionable contracts will start in January.
“My communication was not clear. I needed to have given better clarity. There is money in the budget to pay JSS teachers from January 2025,” Mbadi said.
“It was my communication that was not very good.”
The clarification means JSS tutors will continue working as interns for five months, after which they will be converted to permanent staff.
During an interview with a local television station on Thursday, the CS indicated that there was a shortfall in the budget and the government could not address JSS teachers' concerns.
"We don't have resources for recruiting JSS teachers on permanent and pensionable terms, and we do not have the resources for the additional 20,000 JSS teachers that was reduced in the estimates," Mbadi said during an interview at Citizen TV.
The hiring of JSS teachers is amongst the pending issues teachers’ unions are citing for their threatened nationwide strike.
The Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers and Kenya National Union of Teachers convened special meetings over the weekend where they all resolved to paralyse learning until all their demands are addressed.
The two unions insisted that the teachers' employer, Teachers Service Commission, had tried to address only one issue out of the six demands that must be resolved before they can consider shelving their plans to down tools.
Other pending concerns are promotion of 130,000 teachers and the immediate recruitment of 20,000 new JSS teachers.
The unions are also pushing for prompt remittance of all third-party deductions and commitment by TSC to commence discussions on the new round of the collective bargaining agreement.
"Regrettably, the commission has once again failed to address our concerns. The commissioners brought absolutely nothing tangible in five out of six irreducible demands we have made," the two unions said in a joint statement.
"The unions demand immediate confirmation of all current intern teachers to permanent and pensionable terms effective July 1, 2024, and the remittance of their full salaries for the month, which are now in arrears," Oyuu stated.
The JSS recruitment question triggered a backlash, with various leaders faulting the government on the manner it was handling the interns.
Roots Party leader George Wajackoyah said his administration would have already hired the JSS teachers.
In June, the Court of Appeal put on hold plans to employ 46,000 intern teachers on permanent and pensionable terms.
Justices Asike Makhandia, Sankale Ole Kantai and Ngenye Macharia suspended the orders issued by the Employment and Labour Relations Court requiring TSC to convert the internship to permanent and pensionable terms.