HOW KENYAN TEACHERS ARE SUFFERING AS KNUT WATCHES.

DISTRESS LETTER FROM A TEACHER. 

Edited by Joel Eshikumo. 

Teachers are silently suffering and so when the employer TSC sends them Happy Teachers Day it sounds like mockery. 

Tsc is the most ungrateful employer under the sun. 

It began with the medical scheme. They were taken to Aon minet against their will while at the same time they were nhif contributors. 

Yes after falling sick the teachers was diverted to makeshift clinics called Bliss which gave teachers less than satisfactory medical services.

 Even as we talk there is nothing as uncertain as the teachers health coverage. They keep on shifting the goalposts to ensure that the teacher doesn't score. 

Then came delocalization. The head teachers who performed exemplarliy well, or were in Union or Sacco, kepsha/Kessha leadership were targeted. 

Old men and women in their fifties were mercilessly and mindlessly torn from their families and flung to remote areas to start life afresh.

CBC was forced down their throats with no room for consultation and consensus building. 

They were forced to take up courses in things they literary knew nothing about. Any voice of dissent was stifled and muzzled and as we talk some teachers lost their jobs. 

The so called CBC champions masqueradering as ToTs were reading directly from modules and could not explain head differentiate the head from tail. 

This was supposed to happen during the school holidays so that teachers may not enjoy time with the family. 

Then came the tpad. The teachers spend time filling and filing papers with cooked data. 

This is at the expense of the learners time to ensure that you do not attract negative attention from your supervisor above you. 

The hearts of the teachers died. The passion they poured into their work dissipated. Their minds tuned off and most of them operate on autopilot. 

Nothing matters any more than just keeping alive and afloat. 

Then there is the TPC hanging upon their heads like the sword of Damocles. 

One module will take six years and they are five. A whopping that years. This a teacher who has tarmacked for ten years slaving it out in the so called academies, some have degrees and masters, and yet some are about to retire. 

To add salt to the injury the teacher is supposed to pay. This is during the time that inflation and the cost of living has skyrocketed. Paying rent, placing food on the table, getting transport to work and seeing their children through school has become an exercise in futility. 

During the Covid19 time life was somewhat bearable because of the tax reliefs. When schools resumed things moved from bad to worse. 

The teachers had overstretched and overcommitted their payslips to try and make ends meet and maintain the entire family that was at home due to the closure of the economy.

 Most of those side hussles collapsed and most teachers burnt their fingers - in any case they are not even astute businessmen and women they are teachers. As if that's not painful enough, come this year, came the malicious moneyless CBA. 

The tax reliefs went, the vengeful union dues were reinstated. What are the teachers supposed to do. They staring at poverty on the face. Living is unbelievably nightmarish. The payslip is ready zero. 

Their frustrations are leading them to the local liquor dens/or wine and spirit joints to try and deaden their nerves to the realities of their pitiious existence. 

Before times there was hope. Knut would call for a strike and a few morsels from the government would find their way into the teachers pocket. 

Not anymore. Knut died and so did the hope and salvation of the teachers. 

The current crop of union Leadership is a coterie of sellouts, dregs and leftovers masqueradering as saviours whereas in the real sense they are castrated pariah eunachs who can't bark let alone whimper lest their bowls of soup in the name of union dues is taken away from them or they are harangued like the way their predecessor - Sossion was done. 

With this kind of situation obtaining amongst our teachers why wouldn't our teachers be courting depression. Who minds about the mental health and psychosocial wellness of our teachers. 

Our teachers are silently suffering and morbid fear even of antagonizing the employer. Who will listen to the anger, frustrations, bitterness and pains expressed in the staffroom over tea break and lunch time. 

*Concerned Teacher)