The Teachers Service Commission should review its recruitment requirements, which have for a long time locked out local teachers in arid and semi-arid land areas from securing jobs.
While the education role played by teachers from other regions to schools in these hardship areas can't be swept away, TSC should look into ways in which trained local teachers who have TSC numbers can be considered for recruitment without necessarily considering their experience.
In the past few years, teachers and local leaders have raised concerns about the manner in which TSC has been locking them out, and in their place, considered their colleagues from other regions due to experience and years they have stayed at home after completion of the course.
TSC should consider the challenges that locals undergo while schooling, which includes scarce resources, fees challenges and poverty, among other problems, compared to their colleagues from the neighbouring counties. These professionals are the eyes and resources of their struggling parents.
What the teachers' employer isn't aware is the fact that these same teachers are the ones who have played role in the development of education deep inside kraals where pastoralists have little regard for the importance of education to their lives.
It would only be fair for TSC to employ these locals every time there is a vacancy so that they don't feel locked out. With the competency-based curriculum in place and the need to fully implement it, the government should be reminded of the need to utilise locals as they know the local language and can well demonstrate it to young pastoralists joining primary schools and have no benefit of knowing other languages such as Kiswahili and English.
Using non-locals in CBC activities is likely to disadvantage children from these regions because of language barrier.
Lokwang Patrick is from Turkana county.
