Teachers risk Sh2.4 billion fine as Uhuru urges dialogue

Striking teachers risk paying the State Sh2.4 billion in fines after they disobeyed an order by the Industrial Court requiring them to resume duty on Tuesday.

Attorney-General Githu Muigai Thursday filed an application at the court seeking to have each of the 240,000 teachers involved in the boycott to be fined Sh10,000.

The application came just hours before President Uhuru Kenyatta pleaded again with teachers to resume classes, asking the union leaders to embrace dialogue.

“We are ready to talk but we cannot do so in the streets; by shouting at each other,” Mr Kenyatta said, adding that the allowances that teachers were agitating for would be addressed by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission for the entire public service.

READ: Uhuru urges teachers to return to class

In his application, Prof Muigai asked that upon the teachers submitting their particulars, “they be fined a sum of Sh10,000 which fine should be deducted from their emoluments or dues”.

Prof Muigai also wants the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Secretary General Mudzo Nzili and Mr Sossion committed to six month jail for leading the union members in defying the court orders.

In addition, he wants Knut, which has refused to call off the strike until its demands are met, fined Sh20 million. In lieu, the union’s assets would be sold to recover the money.

“That it is fit that the 2nd and 3rd contemnors be jailed for contempt of court and that the movable and immovable assets of the 1st contemnor be attached as penalty for contempt of court,” states the court document signed by Mwangi Njoroge, the deputy chief litigation counsel at the AG’s office.

The AG’s decision to pursue financial penalties for teachers appears to be informed by the fact it would be impossible to have them committed to jail in light of their number.

The case is the first of its kind in Kenya where the employer is seeking to have a union and its members penalised for disrespecting due process. Knut, however, has argued that the court was being used by the executive to arm twist its members to return to work.

“Any sensible court cannot give such a ruling; that was an insult to the teachers,’’ Mr Sossion, the Knut chairman, said on Tuesday.

On Monday Industrial Court judge Linnet Ndolo declared the strike illegal and ordered teachers to resume work last Tuesday. She also ordered negotiations to resolve the dispute be started under Labour secretary Kazungu Kambi and the parties report back to court a week from Monday.

Efforts to unlock the stalemate on Wednesday were unsuccessful after Mr Kambi said negotiations would only resume after the strike was called off.

READ: Teachers flex muscle in defiance of court order to return to work

The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet), which represents mostly secondary school teachers, called off their strike in compliance with the court order.

However, learning in public schools continued to be paralysed as Knut controls more than 80 per cent of the teachers.

In the application, the union leadership is accused of stating that the court has no power to order teachers back to class, a statement that is said to ridicule the court.

Education secretary Jacob Kaimenyi has insisted that teachers will not be paid their June salaries until they resume work, a move Mr Sossion said had complicated negotiations.

The pay dispute dates back 16 years when a teachers’ strike culminated in the signing of Legal Notice 534 of 1997, whose implementation is at the core of the current dispute.

The deal offered teachers a salary increment of between 105 and 200 per cent and huge increments in house, medical, responsibility, special, hardship and commuter allowances.

Under the agreement, teachers were entitled to house allowances equivalent to 50 per cent of their basic pay, medical (20 per cent), responsibility (45 per cent), special (10 per cent), hardship (30 per cent) and automatic commuter (10 per cent).

Implementing the allowances in contention — house, medical and commuter — would cost the government Sh47 billion annually.

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