Don’t entice voters with baseless education promises – Sossion tells Jubilee

Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary General (SG) Wilson Sossion has laughed off Jubilee’s and Opposition’s recent campaign pledges of prioritizing free primary and secondary education in all public schools, saying that they are just making empty promises to entice the masses.

Speaking in Torit, Ainamoi Constituency Saturday,  Sossion was particularly critical of the Jubilee administration, over what he terms as ‘unrealistic and hypocritical aspirations’ saying they have been in power since 2013 and they have been unable to pay capitation fees.

“Right now the government is unable to pay even capitation of Ksh12, 000 per child per year. 2^nd term capitation which secondary schools have received is only Ksh1, 500 out of Ksh5, 000. Principals cannot run schools because of that deficit,” said Sossion.

The outspoken SG accused the President Uhuru Kenyatta-led administration of frustrating teachers by failing to look into their basic issues of salaries, saying that the government should have started by hiring more teachers, before embarking on free primary and secondary education.

He accused the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC) of failing to honor a Collective Bargaining Agreement they signed with teachers.

“We signed a CBA of Ksh54 billion, and agreed with TSC that breakdown for every teacher and implementation schedule should be released by February 2017, we are almost in June and it is yet to happen,” added Sossion.