Siaya Governor James Orengo says that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) should be accepting teacher memberships at its helm if it ever wants unity in its purpose of championing excellence in public education.
TSC is a government teacher body mainly responsible for registering, recruiting and employing teachers in the country, and according to the Governor, who is also among the best lawyers in Kenya, its lack of representation from the teachers’ side hinders its mission of being the voice of education professionals and is a violation of the law.
“Teachers should be in the Teachers Service Commission (TSC). In the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), practising lawyers elect representatives. In the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC), Members of Parliament sit in that commission,” Orengo pointed out.
TSC consists of a chairperson and eight other members appointed in accordance with the Constitution and Section 8 of the Teachers Service Commission Act, 2012, and the senior counsel says the absence of teachers themselves also impacts reasonable collective bargaining.
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“It is wrong to have a Teachers Service Commission in the Constitution but with no representation from the teachers,” he decried, insisting that that representative of teachers to TSC should be a serving teacher.
The Governor said these during the Kenya Primary School Head Teachers Association (KEPSHA) Nyanza region’s annual general meeting at Siaya Institute of Technology, where he also encouraged teachers not to give up in their pursuit for TSC permanent slots as they got the support of Kenyans.
He advised the government to empower teachers to boost the rural economy as many go through tough times, economically, as they go about shaping and developing the character, potential and independence of the citizenry by imparting critical skills that set them up for success in future.
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