How do we achieve development goals with the children locked out of school?
What you need to know:
- In Nigeria, for example, neither the current nor the former president dared to close schools in areas controlled by Boko Haram; doing so would be admitting that terrorists, who are hell-bent on stopping girls from receiving an education, had won.
- As the Nation editorial stated, President Kenyatta “risks going down in history as the leader who presided over the collapse of an education system and destroyed the lives of millions of children”.
- President Kenyatta has not only failed to deliver the free laptops he promised Standard One pupils, he has stopped students from going to school altogether.
See if you can join the dots here. Last week, the Employment and Labour Relations Court ordered striking teachers to go back to work and negotiate with the government within 90 days.
Before that, the government ignored a court order that awarded teachers a pay hike. When teachers protested by going on strike, the government ordered all schools in the country closed.
As blogger Wandia Njoya tweeted, “So a government that disobeyed a court order to pay teachers expects teachers to obey a court order and resume work. Hii ni Kenya!”
Meanwhile, it turns out that the government has promised massive job cuts (in the name of “rationalisation”) in the civil service to the International Monetary Fund — a financial institution that is known to have caused untold suffering in poor countries by giving them irresponsible loans, and then imposing inhuman austerity measures on them that cripple entire sectors (please read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine).
It seems the government listens more to the IMF than to its own toiling citizens. Did the government ignore the court order on the teachers’ salaries because the IMF told it to? You have to also wonder why the IMF is silent on massive corruption and MPs’ bloated salaries.
All it took was a teachers’ legitimate strike to make the government send 14 million primary and secondary pupils home.
As an editorial in this newspaper stated, this was a most drastic, unprecedented, and ruthless move. Even countries experiencing conflict have not taken such an irresponsible and risky step.
In Nigeria, for example, neither the current nor the former president dared to close schools in areas controlled by Boko Haram; doing so would be admitting that terrorists, who are hell-bent on stopping girls from receiving an education, had won.
I do not know of any country where the government, rather than those who go on strike, has managed to paralyse the education sector in this manner. We could be entering a situation where when nurses or doctors go on strike, the government will shut down every hospital in the country.
Last week President Uhuru Kenyatta was at the United Nations in New York talking about the progress this country has made in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, one of which is to achieve universal primary education. What did he tell his fellow heads of state? That millions of children are now at home and out of class because of him?
As the Nation editorial stated, President Kenyatta “risks going down in history as the leader who presided over the collapse of an education system and destroyed the lives of millions of children”.
I do not want to go into the economic argument against the teachers’ demands. I do not know if the government can or cannot afford to pay the teachers, but I do know that when there is political will, things can happen.
When President Mwai Kibaki promised free primary education, despite the fact that the country was on its knees economically when he won the 2002 elections, he delivered on his promise.
His administration also understood and shunned the evil machinations of international financial institutions, such as the IMF, and therefore made a deliberate policy to “look East” instead.
President Kenyatta has not only failed to deliver the free laptops he promised Standard One pupils, he has stopped students from going to school altogether.
We must accept that the teachers fought a fair fight, in our courts, through a recognised union. We may not agree with the teachers or with the court’s decision to award them a pay increase. We may even have serious doubts about the quality of our public education system, but the fact remains that a court made a ruling.
Only in dictatorships or banana republics are court orders dismissed and constitutions violated in such a casual manner. Yet this government is in power because of a Supreme Court decision. What if the Opposition had refused to accept that decision?
How many court rulings will the President and his government ignore before Kenya is officially declared a failed state by the international community (which will then allow the IMF to step in and give the government another impossible loan to save it from itself)?
