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{
    "id": 582966,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/582966/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 345,
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    "content": "about which should be given to teachers in the award that has been given, if it is available, it automatically spurs activity in the rural economy. In the village, when a teacher earns a salary, a grass slasher earns a salary, a person who looks after his cattle earns a salary, the local bars and the local kiosks will have business. In this country, the biggest workforce is that of teachers. As a country, we should not treat teachers the way we are treating them. That is why we are saying that we and all Kenyans of goodwill; I have no doubt that in this Senate, this is a bi-partisan matter. I see the Chairman of the Committee on Education who is a distinguished teacher in his earlier life, a head teacher who has brought very many people including Members of Parliament (MPs) to the limelight. The professor is a Chancellor of a university and he knows the value of teaching. We have Sen. (Prof.) Anyang'-Nyong'o who was a lecturer at the university and he has probably gone to teach. We want the Jubilee Government to understand that this is not a matter of chest- thumping, displaying arrogance or threatening teachers with arrest. You can arrest some teachers but you will not be able to arrest all the teachers. If you arrest them, we have told Mr. Sossion, Mr. Mudzo Nzili and others that some of us who are lawyers with practicing certificates like Sen. Orengo, Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr., myself and others, are available and willing to go to court for them for free to help them meet and realize the dreams of the Kenyan teachers. Madam Temporary Speaker, I am a son of a teacher. My father was a headmaster of a primary school. It is a scandal to see what teachers earn. As a headmaster of a primary school, I looked at his pay slip and his responsibility allowance as a headmaster of a primary school was Kshs300. I have a brother who was a deputy head teacher of a primary school and his responsibility allowance as a deputy head teacher of a primary school was Kshs230 a month. What can one do with this? We have a noisy lady called Sarah Serem who has been wobbling all over talking about income, salaries and how the wage bill has run away and so on. She has not uttered word about the teacher’s salaries. The teachers are employed by a constitutional commission. It is Sarah Serem who awarded the salaries that the TSC (Teachers’ Service Commission) earns where the lowest is Kshs35,000 and the highest is Kshs526,000. These are the employers of the teachers; many of them much more junior than the teacher they superintend over. What do we see today? They are busy telling teachers that if they do not go to school, they will be fired or locked up. We dare TSC to sack teachers today and they will see what will happen to this country. We dare the TSC to cause teachers to be arrested and locked up, and they will see what will happen to this country. This long protected winding ping pong about the teachers is not doing well in this country. We urge the Government to come down the ladder, stop the brinkmanship that we are seeing and the display of arrogance that is totally unhelpful to any government on earth and listen to teachers, obey, the court order, pay the teachers, have the teachers go back to school and help the country go through the examination season that is around the comer so that we do not destroy our children. These are children whose parents have sold property including animals, personal and family possessions and so on, so that they can take them to school. Madam Temporary Speaker, if they miss examinations, probably we are talking of next year and remember what we went through during the double in-take in the universities, where through mismanagement you had to bring in two lots of intake into"
}