The Parliamentary Committee on Labour and Social Protection has faulted the Teachers Service Commission for unfair hiring.
According to the committee, the TSC marking sheet awards 10 marks to every teacher who has done internship.
Speaking in Kilifi on Monday during a fact-finding tour on utilisation of the Covid-19 relief fund, chairman Peter Mwathi said the criteria gave some applicants unnecessary advantage.
“TSC wants to make it a requirement and an advantage that any teacher who will qualify for the teaching job must have gone through the internship programme but the concern is that the majority did not get the opportunity to do internship.
"But they are teachers who were trained and have been teaching as BOM teachers or in private schools for years and they have never been employed,” Mwathi said.
He asked the TSC to rescind its decision to award marks to applicants based on internship, which he said was done in secrecy.
“There is no need to continue with the interviews if it will disadvantage other teachers from being employed.
"All teachers even those who finished their courses years back must be absorbed without being discriminated against and the criteria to give them marks depending on whether they were interns should be scrapped immediately,” he added.
Kilifi North MP Owen Baya raised the matter during the committee meeting and said that teachers from Kilifi county would be affected if the commission used the current mark sheet.
“The issue of internship is a new thing that is hurting Kilifi county more than any other county and this is unfair administration of justice because not everybody was given equal opportunity on the internship programme,” he said.
Baya said most teachers who were shortlisted for interviews in Kilifi county were from outside the county.
“Teachers from Kilifi were not part of the internship programme that was done and today it has been considered a criterion during the recruitment of the teachers and has been allocated 10 marks. Teachers from Kilifi who have waited for over five years to be employed will not get those jobs because they are already disadvantaged,” he said.
“These teachers did teaching practice which is similar to internship. They have been sacrificing a lot and here is a chance but the TSC is trying to deny these deserving teachers the chance to get employed.”
Edited by Henry Makori
