The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has invited the teachers' unions to a second round of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) deal talks on Tuesday, July 13, after the first round talks fell out.
TSC CEO Nancy Macharia affirmed that the invite is in a bid to end the stalemate between the commission and the unions comprising of Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) and the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT).
The first-round talks, on Tuesday, June 29, held at Safari Park hotel, Nairobi came to a dead end as both parties failed to reach an amicable agreement.
KUPPET Secretary-General Akelo Misori pointed out that the deal offered by TSC did not include any salary increments- which is part of the major grievances stipulated by the unions in their terms.
They further sought for the promotions of teachers, arguing that the performance of the tutors is pegged on the commission's adherence to their pleas.
According to Misori, the talks of the CBA agreement deal had stalled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The standoff between TSC and the teachers' unions has been well documented in the recent past with the unions accusing the commission of not tending to the teachers' grievances.
Former KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion was at the forefront of the standoff, decrying the teachers' welfare and faulting TSC for deliberately trying to hinder its operations.
"When you intimidate teachers, will they perform well?" he posed during a past interview.
TSC, however, disputed the claims arguing that the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) is yet to give a response to the submissions made by the commission regarding the teachers' salaries.
"The directives from the SRC are the ones to guide the TSC, without that communication the teachers' employer is actually helpless," a source within the TSC intimated.
