Teachers Need Paramilitary Training and Guns, KUPPET
Teachers posted in Northern Kenya now want the government to issue them with guns to protect themselves due to the region’s high insecurity level.
Kenya Union of Post Primary School Teachers National Secretary Secondary Edward Obwocha said the teachers need to be given paramilitary training as well.
Obwocha spoke during the Annual General Assembly held by the KUPPET Isiolo branch on Wednesday.
“Teachers cannot protect themselves using chalk. Let them be given guns. Do you agree with me or we continue using chalk? Let us be given military training and guns,” Obwocha said.
Obwocha noted that the Teacher’s Service Commission has interdicted teachers simply because they were trying to run away from the insecurity of the region.
“I am a victim sir, and when those guns come I would like to be trained,” a lady’s voice shouted from the audience.
Obwocha said TSC must consider the lives of the teachers first instead of just interdicting them.
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“That is being inhumane. And that is why we are saying that the Teacher’s Service Commission must be more humane, more friendly, and stop being a teacher’s suffering centre,” he said.
Obwocha said life must be given priority because it comes first before teaching even happens.
The teachers present at the annual General Assembly in Isiolo agreed there is a need for paramilitary training and guns.
The National Assembly Education Committee has also been calling on TSC to address the concerns of the teachers posted in Northern Kenya.
The Chairperson of the Committee Julius Melly urged TSC to first reinstate the interdicted teachers from Northern Kenya.
The teachers were interdicted on grounds that they absconded their duties when they moved to hold protests at TSC headquarters in Nairobi over insecurity in the north.
Melly said TSC failed to listen to teachers’ concerns adding that no teacher should teach under threat.
The MP spoke on October 15 during a function in Tinderet Constituency, Nandi County.
“You cannot teach when your life is under threat. You cannot do a lesson plan. You cannot attend to a child when there is somebody threatening your life,” the Tinderet MP said.
“You can’t work, you can’t even be an administrator in school because every other time you sit trying to work, somebody is after your life.”
He challenged the commissioners at TSC, for they are also teachers, to try working in Northern Eastern Kenya for them to also have a first-hand experience of what it is like to be posted in Mandera.
“I want to ask the commissioners who interdicted the teachers, let them try and have one or two weeks of working as teachers. I want them to go to Mandera for two or three weeks, stay in the same stations, live in police cells and also work under difficult circumstances as the teachers,” Melly said.
The interdictions took effect from September 22, 2023.
