Elected leaders from North Eastern region have been urged to stop politicizing the transfer of non-local teachers by the Teachers Service Commission from the area due to security concern.
The Kenya Livestock Marketing Council Dubat Amey said that concern by the non-local teachers are genuine and no one including the leaders should force them to remain behind.Amey instead asked the leaders to engage with the teachers and listen to them instead of the TSC of transferring non-local teachers out of the region.
“Some members of parliament are saying that the teachers must stay and others have gone further to demonstrate against teachers who wanted to be transferred. Why should they threaten a teacher from Nyeri who want to be transferred for fear of his life,” Amey said.
“The teachers came to this region willingly to come and teach our children but there is a problem. Some of them have been killed. They now fear for their lives,” he added.
Amey said the lives of non-local teachers just like the education of the children from the region are equally important. “Non-local teachers cannot be taken hostage by the leaders, the parents and the community in this region,” he said.
“We need to come up with a solution. This is not politics of Jubilee and NASA. This is a different thing. We need to seat with the teachers. Comfort them, show them some love and agree on the way forward,” he noted.
The chairman said that the 3 governors of Garissa, Wajir, and Mandera should set aside at least Shs1 billion annually to train local teachers as a long-term program to address the teachers shortage occasioned by the transfers of the non-local teachers.
“Let our leaders encourage our local youth leaving school to train as teachers. This problem cannot be solved by issuing press conferences in Nairobi but coming up with a forum of education stakeholders from the three counties engaging with the teachers,” he noted.