Our teachers deserve better; listen to them

For Kenyan teachers, their careers have been a series of injustices balanced precariously on exploitation.

The government may refuse to give you employment after a lengthy training period despite there being an acute shortage of teachers; you may be sent to work in a place where the hardship allowance doesn’t begin to make up for the fact that terrorists want to turn you into a sieve; and parents of your students are a demanding lot who insist you help their children do the impossible with the inadequate.

And the children, oh, there’s just too many of them. Some have to sit on the floor, some barely have the books, some lack school uniform, and some are hungry.

Then think of all that homework you have to mark. How many red pens will you go through in a term? Think of all that repetitive strain injury from marking big ‘Xs’ on the book.

The ratios you face in the classroom would leave a prison warden worried. And even then the wardens get to carry truncheons; nowadays smacking the little bottoms of naughty kids — as you were smacked by a teacher who was in an unbroken chain of child abuse going back all the way to the Old Testament — is a career-ending move.

The government, meanwhile, constantly lies to you that it will improve your lot, the ministry banned holiday tuition so you cannot make a few bob, and whenever you go on strike the judge finds your actions illegal. “Your” service commission even threatens to fire you.

When you are a teacher there are a lot of rocks left to be turned over, your anger at the system is panoramic and retrospective. The government, you see, never has money.

HOSPITAL PASS

We are skint. We must tighten our belts and live within our means. We need loans just to get by. Except if you are a hustler and want a jet, or an MP with endless sitting allowances. Except if you are the National Youth Service, a vanity project with inflated contracts. The army, meanwhile, gets a blank cheque.

We also have money for all those foreign trips to destinations most teachers will never go to. There is money for them, but not for you.

Teachers’ strikes are bound to be divisive. However worthy and widely supported the cause, they pit teachers against their unions and anger parents struggling with child care. Many parents usually use schools as a form of childcare, allowing them to work. I remember listening on radio of parents complaining that they had paid school fees yet children were still at home “eating and running up the electricity bill”.

We keep reading that Kenya is a regional hub for technology, industry and banking because it has a more educated workforce. The staggeringly miserable truth is that despite our having the best educated workforce in the world — we beat Uganda and Tanzania by a country mile in literacy, according to Uwezo reports; and our universities outrank others in the region — we still underpay the ones who facilitate our position in the region. Our teachers and lecturers strike annually.

Teachers put up with appalling work conditions. The class sizes have increased, funding per pupil is down, workload has increased and the school textbooks programme is underfunded. Funding commitment does not seem to be linked to enrolment numbers. What happens in such a situation is that it is the school curriculum that takes the hit whenever we cannot find the money to match the students. The quality of learning will continue to fall until these matters concerning funding are addressed.

Yes, I know that the deal to pay teachers was what is referred to in American football as a “hospital pass”, where the recipient of the pass risks such heavy contact with an opponent that he may end up in hospital. Kanu agreed to the deal because it didn’t expect to pay up so soon. It then threw the pass to Narc, who probably couldn’t afford to pay up.

However, we should marvel at the gaps in pay between the top and the bottom. It is wrong that some members of the public sector have entertainment allowances greater than the median pay of the entire service. The ratio between the highest paid and lowest paid is more than a hundred to one. A fairer system would make public sector workers feel more valued, it shouldn’t seem like a monkeys-dey-work-baboons-dey-chop situation.

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SRC should preach parity 

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission should talk about pay disparity and the inequality in the public sector, not teachers’ pay. If everyone seems to be off the gravy train, maybe teachers can back down. Tell me, when did wanting an improvement to your salary and pension in line with inflationary increases become selfish? When did an agreement that you have shaken on and has been upheld by a court become blackmail? When did teachers demanding what is theirs by right become wrong? Mistreating our teachers and underpaying them is inexplicable intellectual suicide of our country.

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ATTENTION KEBS

We need a serious probe into Kenya’s shrinking ugali servings

THERE IS a problem I have noted while eating nyama choma around the country: the ugali is getting smaller. At first I thought it was a blip, or an act of parsimony. Perhaps maize prices were to blame; but now it has become clear that, all over, ugali portions are shrinking.

Is there some sort of rationing going on that I wasn’t told about? For some reason chefs across the country no longer know the daily dietary requirement of an adult male. I was flabbergasted last week when I was served ugali in a saucer. If ugali is itself placed on a saucer, you are too ashamed to even ask for “ugali-saucer”.

Such meanness is unAfrican. You end up as hungry as a butcher’s dog when you leave the restaurant. I think I know the reason why the ugali barely raises its chin above average; it is cooked by people who do not like it. They have no appreciation for our national meal. They think the roast meat is the main player in the meal. But ugali isn’t an afterthought when you are preparing goat ribs.

It is an equal player in the meal. It deserves the right amount of attention (and none of this nonsense of putting margarine in it). I now expect the Kenya Bureau of Standards, through its department of weights and measures, to issue a statement to restaurant owners around the country on the adequate proportions of ugali to be served to clientele. We need guidance on this most important matter.

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FERRY DOWNTIME

Folks, how about letting canoes do the Likoni run?

A ferry at the Likoni crossing in Mombasa was last week withdrawn for a one-month repair period.

Why is it that our ferries frequently lose their bearing and require regular servicing? We bought new German ones the other day and yet we still suffer from delays.

Even the new German machines are struggling to cope under the strain. Yes, the ferries run flat out for 24 hours and need regular servicing, but surely does fixing them have to take a whole month?

Also, there is that little matter of them being declared as decidedly not sea-worthy by the World Maritime Association. Let’s not think about that though as we overload these decrepit, rusty, there-but-for-the-grace-of-god vessels on their trips. If we went back to canoes we would have better experience across the crossing, “seahorsepower” seems so unreliable.