Teachers to get withheld July pay

Teachers whose July salaries were withheld because of the strike will now be paid in full but with conditions.

The teachers will have to support and fully implement the laptops project, a favourite project of the Uhuru/Ruto administration.

They will also have to put in extra hours for remedial class and to cover work lost during their strike which lasted three weeks.

These are some of the resolutions reached at a meeting between President Kenyatta, Teachers Service Commission and Kenya National Union of Teachers officials at State House, Nairobi.

The order to slash teachers’ salaries would have affected 200,000 teachers mainly in primary schools who had refused to resume work after the court declared their strike illegal.

Those teaching in secondary schools resumed work after the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers signed a deal with the government.

Knut had threatened fresh industrial action had the government made good its threat to withhold salaries.

Signs that an agreement could be in the offing emerged on Friday when President Uhuru Kenyatta met Knut officials at State House, Nairobi.

The officials emerged from the meeting full of praise for President Kenyatta.

After Monday’s meeting, teachers will be required to fullfil a set of conditions including putting in extra learning hours for pupils to recover time lost during the strike, and supporting the implementation of the laptop for schools programme that starts next year.

This, President Kenyatta said, will be achieved by an extension of the second and third school terms by one week each, as well as carrying out extra lessons during the current term to bring schools up to speed with the time lost.

“In consideration of the above, the government has decided to pay teachers their withheld July salaries on the basis that they will teach for the time they were illegally absent from school,” President Kenyatta said in a statement soon after meeting teachers in State House, Nairobi.