Strike
The Siaya Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) officials today called for immediate closure of all teacher training colleges and other institutions where the union draws its membership.
Siaya branch executive secretary, Sam Opondo and chairman, Robert Ouko, who led a huge demonstration that bought business to a standstill in Bondo town at the same time warned heads of secondary schools who are keeping students that they will bear their own cross should anything happen to the pupils during the strike period.
Addressing the demonstrators at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga park in Bondo, Opondo said that learning should not be taking place in any post primary education institution when members are on industrial action. “When we talk about institutions, we also talk about teacher training colleges. We don’t want to hear that there is any learning taking place in TTCs in Siaya,” said the branch executive secretary.
Siaya branch KUPPET members demonstrate along Bondo town streets to push their employer, TSC to yield to their demands.
Opondo said KUPPET members expected that by now, the Government of Kenya and the teachers’ service commission would have committed themselves on all the teachers’ demands. Among the demands, he said, was that TSC abandons the Career Progression Guideline to determine who qualifies for promotion.
“We expected CPG, which is responsible for teachers’ stagnation to be done away with,” he said adding that TSC has continued to disobey a 2018 court order that it be done away with. Opondo said that the teachers strike will not end until the signing of a return to work formula that will ring fence all their demands is signed by the relevant parties.
Siaya KUPPET branch chairman, Robert Ouko said teachers were ready for any kind of intimidation from the TSC and the government. “We will not bow. We will not cow or die,” he said adding that they were ready even to be jailed for their cause.
