The Kenya National Civil Society Centre (KNCSC) on Sunday piled pressure on the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to reinstate the 129 teachers the agency interdicted for demanding transfers from the North Eastern region.
In a statement, KNCSC Executive Director Suba Churchill posed that instead of interdicting the teachers, TSC should liaise with the Ministries of Education and Interior to put in place situation-specific policies and measures that will guarantee security in the North Eastern region which will subsequently instill confidence among the teachers.
"They (teachers) need to perform their duties and deliver on their respective mandates in an atmosphere that is secure, enabling and reassuring," the lobby said in its statement.
While describing the interdiction as heartless and insensitive, Churchill emphasised that the TSC is violating the right of the teachers who are Kenyan citizens and undermining their right to security under Article 29 of the Constitution.
According to Suba, the move to sack the teachers is ill advised especially since the national government and the TSC are aware of the security threats that the teachers face while discharging their duties in North Eastern.
"To dismiss them merely because they have raised concern that the environment in which they work undermines their security amounts to direct and indirect discrimination by the State on account of their ethnic, social origin," he added.
Churchill stressed that the commission should not take advantage of the teachers by sending them to perceived unsafe areas and disregarding their welfare.
The interdiction of the teachers has triggered debate in the country with several politicians calling for the TSC to revoke the letters sent to the victims.
Tinderet MP Julius Melly who doubles up as the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Education Committee is on record calling for reinstatement of the teachers.
On Monday last week, the teachers took to the streets along Upperhill rejecting TSC's decision to sack them. They were however, teargassed and chased away by police officers. 10 teachers were arrested in the confrontation.
The teachers had refused to report to the different schools they had been posted to in North Eastern, a stance that TSC interpreted as open defiance leading to the interdiction.
