Thousands of Junior Secondary School (JSS) intern teachers who were looking forward to being employed by the government have been dealt a blow following a fresh announcement by Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu.
CS Machogu announced that the employment of 46,000 JSS intern teachers will be forfeited.
The CS made the announcement on Saturday, June 29, 2024, in Mombasa during the fourth annual Kenya Secondary School Heads Association national delegates conference.
Machogu dashed the hopes of the teachers when confirming that the government will have to forfeit the employment of the teachers on permanent and pensionable terms due to budgetary constraints.
Machogu on why Govt will not employ JSS Teachers
He explained that the budgetary constraints have been occasioned by the rejection of the Finance Bill 2024.
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The CS said that the Ministry will have to focus on priorities due to the rejected Bill, confirming that the employment of the teachers was among allocations axed by the government to accommodate for the resulting financial gap.
“As the government now, we have to go back to the drawing board and see the priorities that we can be able to cater for and anything that we can be able to remove from the budget,” said Machogu.
CS Machogu’s remarks comes after the 46,000 graduate teachers who had been on strike since April demanding for permanent employments suspended the boycott last month.
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They suspended the boycott until July 5 to give the National Assembly time to pass the Finance Bill 2024.
The interns further urged the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) through their national spokesman Omari Omari to release a circular on their confirmation to permanent and pensionable terms as soon as the Financial Bill, 2024 was passed.
President William Ruto had also promised to convert the intern teachers to fully employed if the Finance Bill 2024 was passed.
However, the Finance Bill was rejected following deadly youth-led protests against the controversial Bill and its proposals which the government aimed at increasing revenue collections.
President Ruto in an address on June 26 said that his government had decided to withdraw the Finance Bill following deadly protests a day earlier that resulted to deaths and the invasion of Parliament Buildings by protesters.
Following the suspension, the government suffered a budgetary financing gap of Ksh346 billion.
Allocation of Funds to Education Ministry
Meanwhile, Machogu has maintained that the government’s commitment to finance education to ensure uninterrupted learning in schools is a priority.
The CS while still speaking at the conference stated that the education sector has been allocated about 30% of the national budget for the 2024/2025 Financial year.
He in turn called for proper utilization of funds allocated to schools, saying that the government released billions of shillings for school capitation.
“Last week we disbursed capitation to various levels of basic education as follows; Ksh2.7 billion to primary schools, Ksh14 billion to Junior schools and Ksh18.8 billion to secondary schools.
This is in addition the disbursement we made last term of Ksh4.7 billion to primary schools, Ksh50.1 billion to Junior schools and Ksh32.4 billion to secondary schools,” said Machogu.
Machogu insisted that it is the statutory and moral duty of the school heads to utilize these funds prudently and efficiently for the benefit of their institutions and learners.
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