Primary school teachers have started countrywide demonstrations to call for their employment by Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
The protests come after TSC advertised a total of 20,000 teaching vacancies in November that failed to include the Primary Teacher Education (PTE) teachers.
TSC advertised 20,000 intern teaching vacancies that are exclusively for Junior Secondary School (JSS) unlike in previous years where such an advert would see JSS getting 18,000 slots and the remaining going to primary school.
TSC CEO Dr. Nancy Macharia had early this year hinted at stopping recruitment of primary school teachers saying they have excess teachers in primary schools.
Macharia while appearing before the Parliamentary Education Committee said the Commission has in excess of 18,057 teachers serving in primary schools.
She said the surplus teachers were brought by the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) that saw two classes (Class 7 and 8) being scrapped as learning in primary school now end in Grade 6.
TSC has continued to promote excess primary school teachers by deploying them to seve in junior secondary, special schools and secondary schools.
However a crisis is facing primary school teachers with some remaining in the cold since 2008 without TSC employment.
The country education sector is in dire situation as currently a total of 400,000 teachers registered by TSC are yet to be employed by government.
The PTE and DPTE teachers are now converging in various sub counties to agitate for their employment by the Commission.
However Busia senator Okiya Omtatah thinks otherwise saying no one has a right to employment by the government.
Speaking while on KTN TV and being hosted by Ken Mijungu alongside Kisii senator Richard Onyonka, Omtatah said governments are only required to employ people to address a need and not because people lack employment.
Omtatah says its not government business to employ people but to provide services and only employ to facilitate provision of services.
