Teachers win salary raise battle at the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has upheld a Court of Appeal ruling directing the teachers' employer to pay them a 50-60pc pay raise until its appeal challenging the increment is heard and determined.

The top court in the land on Monday declined to grant the Teachers Service Commission's request to suspend the Court of Appeal order.

In their ruling, judges Willy Mutunga, Kalpana Rawal, Jackton Ojwang, Mohamed Ibrahim and Smokin Wanjala said they had no jurisdiction to entertain the TSC application.

The pay raise orders, they said, were issued by the Court of Appeal that had exercised its powers under the law.

LACK JURISDICTION

“In these circumstances, we find that this court lacks jurisdiction to entertain an application challenging the exercise of discretion by the Court of Appeal,” the judges ruled.

The TSC had appealed against the ruling initially issued by the High Court when the Court of Appeal directed it to effect the 50 to 60 per cent basic pay raise beginning August 1.

The appellate court told the teachers' employer to continue paying the raised pay until its appeal is determined.

Court of Appeal judges Mohammed Warsame, Sankale ole Kantai and Jamila Mohammed had also warned the TSC that failure to comply with their order would lead to an automatic collapse of its appeal.

SH17BN BUDGET

It is this directive that made the TSC to approach the Supreme Court, where it was seeking to have the orders lifted until their case before the Court of Appeal is concluded.

In its application before the Supreme Court, the TSC argued that a sum in excess of Sh17 billion would be required to effect the appellate court's orders but it had no money to do so.

Further violation of the Constitution, TSC lawyers argued, was perpetuated by the Court of Appeal judges when they directed the government to pay “yet we had raised reasonable grounds of appeal that the Labour Court’s judgment was unlawful”.