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"content": "Eastern Kenya, particularly, the county that he represents in this House, have had to go through because of this act of negligence by the Government. After the pressure and noise that was raised by the teachers from other regions that were teaching in North Eastern, the Government, without any due consideration of how the lives of the school going children in that region would be affected, accepted and bowed down to the pressure. It decided to withdraw the teachers who had made that request. These teachers are considered as non-locals. I do not want to seem to make light of the challenges that the non-local teachers, who are teaching in North Eastern are going through. Some of them are known to me through family, friends or the people I represent. Particularly, I remember the time that they visited us in this Senate. During our usual breaks, they had the opportunity to share with us the kind of difficulties and challenges they face while working in North Eastern Kenya. Therefore, it was within their rights, as any right thinking Kenyan would do, when faced with the kind of challenges that they were facing, to agitate and go back to their employer, who sent them to North Eastern to teach. It was within their right and nobody is condemning them for pulling out of the schools and going to the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to present their issues. Madam Temporary Speaker, however, we expected the TSC not to make the callous decision it made to resolve the issue, given that it understands its mandate and knows that education is integral and a basic human right. All they needed to do was to have a round table discussion with the representatives of those teachers as well as the Government security forces, because it is the duty of any Government to provide security for its citizens in any part of this country. The TSC, as the employer of these teachers, should have said: “We have done our bit, but, unfortunately, if there are issues to do with security, we absolutely have no mandate on that. However, since we want to ensure that there is continuous learning in our institutions without any due interference, we have called you, as a Government agency, to give us a roadmap and tell us your mitigating plans of ensuring that the teachers, who are teaching in these institutions, have good security to enable them to provide the necessary services when they show up for work.” Madam Temporary Speaker, Kenyans are peace loving people and love one another. However, when your life is under threat, there is very little that you can do; you would rather retreat to places that you are familiar with and live amongst people that you have grown around. Therefore, the teachers agitated and called for the Government to make a decision. They said: “Please, you need to provide us with security.” Since nobody heeded their pleas for such a long time, they saw it wise, out of the abundance of question, to withdraw their services and request the TSC to post them elsewhere. The other issues about cultural diversity and challenges in terms of religious practices that these teachers were raising should have been handled by the local leadership, including the Governor, Senator, the Members of the National Assembly and the Members of the County Assembly. Let the community understand that we live in a country that is diverse in terms of religious and cultural practices. Therefore, there is no need for that discrimination, if the issues that they were raising were true. I have no The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}