Teachers Service Commission has termed as a drop in the ocean the move to employ 5,000 teachers annually.
The commission noted that the country needed 103,000 teachers to address the current shortage and fully implement the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) system.
The teaching fraternity loses between 8,000 to 10,000 teachers every year through retirement, natural causes or deaths, TSC says.
“Due to budget constraints the government is employing a partial 5,000 teachers every year which is a drop in the ocean,” said TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia.
Speaking over the weekend during a consultative meeting in Lake Naivasha Simba Lodge, Macharia said the commission had embarked on the process of updating teachers’ personal data.
Under the project that will be fully implemented in March next year, the commission would freshly collect the teachers bio-data in a bid to update its data.
“We plan to go full throttle in the bio-metric programme where we shall get the teachers personal information including levels of education and health issues,” she said.
Macharia said that a total of 1,120 teachers had been transferred in this financial year to address equitable distribution.
On teachers’ medical care, the CEO said the ongoing scheme was the largest in the region with over 341,000 teachers benefiting.
She said the scheme, which would benefit another one million dependants, was 99 per cent successful despite some hiccups as a third party implemented it.
Macharia noted that the scheme was handy at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw tens of teachers admitted in various hospitals across the country.
“At the height of the pandemic, we managed to evacuate some sick teachers affected by the virus through this medical scheme,” she said.
TSC chairman Dr Jamleck Muturi said that they were carrying out several reforms in the commission to serve teachers better.
He said that under the programme, all the commission services including transfers, medical cover, promotion, training and others would be automated.
“We want to make sure that teachers receive all the services on the touch of the button so as to save them the time taken to travel all the way to Nairobi,” he said.
