Mass transfer of teachers could cause more pain than it’s worth
What you need to know:
Perhaps, instead of threatening a strike, Mr Sossion should try to persuade the TSC to go easy on the transfers.
Many teachers are hurting. Can you imagine an elderly male principal who has never lived alone in 30 years being forced to fend for himself?
Sadly, the majority to be affected are elderly people who are settled in life and cannot muster enough energy to start all over again.
There is no doubt about it; teachers are not only angry, they are apprehensive, disoriented and demoralised because they believe their employer is punishing them.
Indeed, judging from the reaction of a number of them, there are strong indications that what now looks like a looming squall between them and the Teachers Service Commission may eventually metamorphose into a veritable tornado that will sweep aside everything in its path. Or maybe not, depending on how the matter is handled.
UNTOLD HARDSHIP
I never thought there could come a time when I agreed with Kenya National Union of Teachers chairman Wilson Sossion on any issue, but this time, I believe he has a genuine grievance, though his method of rectifying it — threatening to stage yet another strike in the next one week — is still too predictably knee-jerk. The teachers are this time round agitated about being forcibly appraised on their performance, claiming they waste too much time and undergo untold hardships filling forms.
On this one, the gripe simply won’t wash. Appraisals are common and universal, and though oftentimes annoying, no other way of assessing the performance of an employee has been found to be as effective. At one time or the other, every employee, especially in the private sector, has to undergo an appraisal of some kind, for this is the only way an employer can know whether or not the employee is delivering. Indeed, on this issue, only the sluggards, the drunkards, and other habitual underperformers need be afraid.
NATIONAL INTEGRATION
However, the other issue that is making many in the fraternity tremble is the looming transfer of all senior teachers, head teachers and their deputies, principals and their deputies who have worked in one station for more than nine years. They are to be transferred from schools in their own counties to others where their administrative skills are supposed to help the historically disadvantaged institutions.
The other aim, which of course sounds definitely trite and platitudinous, is to inculcate “national integration and improve the quality of education”.
Needless to say, you don’t promote national integration by moving a valuable workforce all over the country like so many pieces on a checkerboard. This is the easiest way to demotivate even those teachers who regard their profession as a vocation. In short, if teachers are being transferred with the aim of fostering a sense of nationhood, the whole exercise may turn out to be futile.
During the first phase of mass transfers in January this year, newly-deployed principals were rejected by both parents and learners in western Kenya, Nyanza and other regions, and the TSC had to beat a hasty retreat when it became clear that nobody can really perform in such an atmosphere. There is no saying what will happen during the ongoing second phase, which is expected to affect 4,000 heads in county and sub-county schools.
LUCRATIVE TENDERS
On the other hand, the TSC is correct in one respect. If a head teacher stays in one school for too long, it is possible for him or her to forge an unsavoury symbiotic relationship with school boards. Principals, board members and prominent citizens in a locality have been known to collude to ensure all the lucrative tenders go their way. The best-placed people to destroy such practices should be education directors at county and sub-county levels, and if they do their work well, they ought to succeed in uprooting such rent-seekers from their comfort zones, but of course, this being Kenya, such a thing is easier said than done.
There is no doubt the TSC bosses mean well, but perhaps it is time they heeded the cry of teachers. It is clear the Knut and Kuppet leadership placed their heads in a noose. While negotiating for the CBA after the 2015 strike, they failed to notice a clause in the Code of Regulations which stated: “In undertaking deployment [of teachers] the commission shall delocalise the administration of public institutions”.
HIGHER SALARIES
Apparently, the unionists did not read the clause and now that oversight has come to haunt them. There is no use for Mr Sossion to argue that “mass transfers are in contravention of international norms”. He and his colleagues should have been more diligent, but apparently they were fixated on higher salaries to the exclusion of everything else. Perhaps, instead of threatening a strike, Mr Sossion should try to persuade the TSC to go easy on the transfers. Many teachers are hurting. Can you imagine an elderly male principal who has never lived alone in 30 years being forced to fend for himself?
Sadly, the majority to be affected are elderly people who are settled in life and cannot muster enough energy to start all over again. There truly ain’t no justice in this world.
Ngwiri is a consultant editor. [email protected]
