To The Kind Attention of The Hon. Cabinet Secretary
Dear Hon. Cabinet Secretary,
REF: ML&SP/TU/ELECTIONS/2021-PETITION
Upholding the provision that the parent Ministry of Labour and Social Protection is the core custodian of the legal statutes that govern all legally registered and operative Trade Unions in Kenya; KNUT inclusive.
We write to seek your kind intervention in a series of scenarios meant to enhance clear course for free, fair and just conduct of Union Elections.
Your Ministry holds a supervisory and regulatory mandate that surpasses other organs and or institutions within the labour transect.
As a team of Executive Secretaries of Branches who ascended to our offices through the procedural and popular vote of the KNUT Membership, we humbly bank our confidence in your esteemed office as a noble and legally mandated Government Establishment that will create a level ground for our petitions to be heard and acted upon timely.
Your prescriptive and elaborate Circular dated 25th, September, 2020 herein refers.
In the clear Circular Statement; you provided that; All registered Trade Unions, Employers Organizations and Federations stand to respect the constitutionally 5-Year Tenure of Service with elections conducted at the end of term to usher in new offices and officers to run the respective institutions.
Citing your Circular; the last elections were conducted in the year 2016, providing the year 2021 as the legal calendar season for the next election with 4th, January – 31st
March, 2021 being the duration for Branch Elections and 1st April – 31st June 2021 set aside for National Elections in keeping pace with constitutional conformity.
It is in nerve of the above that we humbly table our core prayer that all Trade Unions, Employers Organizations and Federations should be made and seen to adhere with the statutes stipulated in your supreme circular.
In particular; KNUT being an aged and experienced Union since pre-independent Kenya should facilitate constitutionally set conditions and environments that shall see the conduct of elections pegged on the very Union’s Constitution (Kenya National Union of Teachers Constitution, Rules and Regulations Revised December 2015).
It is our belief that KNUT shall remain a structure that is respected not only by name and composition but by managerial and administrative actions and systems that are commensurate with the requisite constitutionalism, democracy and integrity but not a caricature of management that derails the norms and virtues of the labour culture and etiquette.
Respecting the Rule of Law to which all Unions must subscribe, Cognizant of the Ministerial Guidelines in running Unions. Dependent on the KNUT Constitutional Provisions,
We the undersigned humbly make submissions for your kind consideration and action as hereunder;
THAT:
1. The current Secretary General of Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT); Hon Wilson Sosion; holds a history that denies him the prerogative to manage and or run a Union with legal identity and standing in the land. That the respective Secretary General was sacked, by his Employer TSC.
He was dismissed and deregistered as a teacher with his practicing and purported professional Certificate withheld and later withdrawn rendering his legibility to teach, manage, advise or even establish any institution of learning within the borders of Kenya annulled.
The Court of Appeal he attempted to squeeze back his debunked glory upheld and send record of his deregistration to the Government Gazette (records available with his former employer – TSC).
This act denies him the right and democratic viability to represent workers who stopped sharing an employer with him.
2. Abuse of Chapter Six of the promulgated Constitution of Kenya 2010 is intense in the actions and conduct of the Officer who has hijacked the respected Union for his personal interest.
Professional Conduct and Discipline as stipulated in the KNUT Constitution stands in indeterminate state in nerve of operatives who illegally exist at the helm of the very Union.
Article XIV Clause I provides that; It shall be considered unprofessional for any member of the Union to do anything that would bring discredit to the Union.
It is on the basis of the same that we now submit our humble prayers to you Hon CS;
1. THAT may your good office intervene in the conduct of KNUT Management including Human Resource, Financial Discipline and Liaisons that are relevant to the Union course.
2. THAT may the current KNUT Secretary General Hon. Wilson Sosion explain and provide redress in the matter which KNUT Executive Secretaries of Branches have never earned since June 2019; (16 Months down the line).
The Union’s central paying centers were pulled down without reference and or consultations with the Union Organs that constitutionally matter despite TSC continued disbursement of funds to provide the deserved pay packages to the KNUT Leadership Fraternity.
Millions of Shillings have been transferred to KNUT Accounts but shared at source by the heartless National Steering Committee members of the Union subjecting families of the aggrieved Officers to inhumane conditions and overstated insecurities.
Members of the National Steering Arm earn without cease with zero feeling for the Executive Secretaries pushed in want, loss of esteem and economic pestilence.
Article XII of KNUT be invoked on management of Union Finances.
3. THAT intervention be made to ascertain the plight and fate of the aggrieved Executive Secretaries who have been deprived of their Constitutional Rights upto and including statutory provisions of Medical Covers and other benefits that are coherent to their standing and mandate in the respective Union.
Statutory deductions are done by the Employer (KNUT Headquarters at source).
Failure to remit the same and account for any other emoluments is in question and calls for inquest in the foregoing to establish possibilities of flaws in managing the Union Coffers.
4. THAT the Employment Act be invoked to check the bureaucratic infiltration of nepotism, abuse of Employee Welfare and other forms of corruption that may have bedeviled the one time revered Union due to egocentric aims that are inconsistent with the KNUT Constitution.
Suspensions, Expulsion and or discipline of Union Officials using modalities that are unconstitutional in accordance with the KNUT Constitution is worth probing and establishing the undercurrents that continue rocking the boat of the Union by external powers injected in the Union through the top leadership that stand to gain from the spoils of the very Union.
5. Teachers Service Commission be requested to provide the legitimate Register of KNUT Voters at each stage of Polling in the 2021Elections for perusal and verification, with Voting Centers clearly identified and named and their credible management guaranteed in good time to avoid micromanagement of the polling process that easily allows infiltration of illegal personalities in the respected offices of the Union.
6. May the KNUT Constitution supersede other foreign legal provisions that are inconsistent with the Union and its description of Conduct of Elections and other Union managerial stipulations to stand upheld.
Suspension of the Union Constitution, Union Organs and Functions for 2 years was in itself a legal flaw that calls for probing as the same can never be a preserve of an individual whose membership to the very Union still stands questioned. The suspended Organs were thus;
a) Branch Annual Meetings
b) Branch Executive Committee Meetings
c) Regional Council Meetings
d) National Advisory Council Meetings
e) National Executive Council Meetings
f) National Delegates Conference
This is not only an act of dictatorship but a practice of creating enabling environments to conduct misdemeanor and other underlying malpractices that are not in tandem with the legal provisions of the Kenya National Union of Teachers Constitution, Rules and Regulation-Revised December 2015.
Kindly consider addressing our prayers prior to conducting the anticipated 2021 Term Elections for Trade Unions, Employers Organizations and Federations duly anticipated.
