New teachers fail to turn up for second term in Mandera

All recently recruited teachers who were posted to Mandera have not returned for the second term.

Chief Education Officer Abdi Mohamed said to avert a crisis, the county government had submitted a list of retired teachers to the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) for re-employment.

“The TSC recruited 261 teachers in the first term for primary schools and a few for secondary schools but none has come back. We are hoping they might return next week but we have taken steps to avert a crisis,” Mr Mohamed said.

He said the county government was spending more than Sh7 million monthly paying about 600 intern teachers for both primary and secondary schools. “Negotiations are underway to have these interns paid by the TSC and to recall retired teachers,” he said.

He said only 19 retired teachers had shown willingness to return to work. The vast northeastern county has 42 public secondary and 188 primary schools.

“We are in a crisis and we need our brothers from other parts of the country to help us because our interns can only teach arts subjects and those with C-minus passes cannot be expected to produce good results.”

He accused trained teachers of using Mandera as a job-hunting ground and abandoning it once they had a TSC number and were on the payroll.

However, other officials said it was too early to conclude that the new teachers had absconded duty.

Hundreds of non-local teachers have refused to return to Mandera after last year’s terror attacks that left 68 dead, including teachers.