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"content": "way of informing those taskforces so that the recommendations we will come with will, by and large, embrace the views of Members of Parliament who represent Kenyans in this House. When we talk about non-teaching staff, it is important to note that in some institutions, we refer to them as subordinate staffs. There are those who are clear in their minds as to who is subordinate and who can be referred to as non-teaching staff. However, by and large, it is a term that has been used to define those individuals across the board. Specifically, we are talking about bursars, accounts clerks, secretaries, messengers, drivers, grounds-men or grounds-women, artisans, cooks, cateresses, matrons and even nurses. Some schools have nurses. We have the watchmen or gatemen. In some institutions, that also covers laboratory assistants. We now have computer technicians and librarians. That is the cadre of people that this Motion seeks to help get into a known arrangement by the Government. It is important to know that the Government contributes Kshs3,965 per student per year. On the other hand, parents also contribute Kshs2,743 as a contribution to the same kitty. If you work out the total amount of that money, it amounts to a huge figure. This Motion does not seek to compel the Government to spend extra money on top of what it has been giving. However, there is need to look at the money it has been sending to schools â that is the Kshs3,965 per student and the contribution by the parents amounting to Kshs2,743. That money is given out as a result of a circular that was issued by the Government. When that was being done, the Government also gave a circular specifying how many workers should be put on board. The circular, if I can get some few details from it, says that schools with one stream and day schools with one stream were required to employ six workers. However, a one stream boarding school was to employ 10 workers. Two stream schools were encouraged to employ eight workers and a two steam boarding school - 15 workers. Day schools with three streams were to employ nine workers while the three stream boarding schools were to employ 20 workers. The ones with four streams were required to employ 13 workers and the boarding ones 28 workers. Five streams day schools were to employ 15 while the boarding ones were to get 30 workers. The last one is the six stream schools which were required to employ 18 workers if it was a day school or 36 workers if it was a boarding school. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, while this circular directed the school management committees to engage those workers, it was lacking to the point that there was no direction as to who should be employed and how many should be taken in each category. How many messengers, for example, should be part of the six workers? In other words, there was no categorization of which jobs should be occupied by who. Secondly, even the amount of money that was to be paid to each employee was not specified. So, we have ended up, across the country, with a situation where you have a messenger in one school paid X amount of money and in the neighbouring school, a messenger is paid Y amount of money. Both of them do the same kind of work but they are paid differently. This issue has been left at the discretion of the principal. The principal decides who it is that should be employed and what amount of money he should be paid. There is the Board of Governors (BOG), but the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) quite often makes the decision and then reports to the BOG. That is the practice. We cannot run away from that reality. This has brought a lot of disparities within the institutions and, certainly, it affects the morale of non-teaching"
}