Before you vote: the truth about electricity in schools, laptops and teacher pay

President Uhuru Kenyatta looks on as KNUT Chairman Mudzo Nzili makes his address during a press briefing on the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) and Teachers Unions Collective Bargaining Agreement at State House, Nairobi on October 28, 2016. PHOTO | PCSU

“Can somebody who was unable to pay teachers, somebody who was unable to bring laptops, somebody who was unable to bring electricity to schools, really pay fees for schoolchildren?”-  Governor Hassan Ali Joho at Nasa Rally in Machakos County, Sunday June 4, 2017

Was the government unable to bring laptops and electricity to schools and pay teachers?

Regarding connection of schools to electricity, Kenya Power says that in the 2015/2016 fiscal year it connected electricity to 7,402 public primary schools under the national public schools electrification programme implemented in conjunction with the Rural Electrification Authority (REA).  This brought the cumulative connections in primary schools to 18,793.

Nation Newsplex could not find published reports or data on the laptop project from the ministries of Education or ICT. Since September 30, 2016, when the government began rolling out the laptop project, at least 700,000 out of 1.2 million Standard One pupils had received tablets by April 16, 2017, according to Deputy President William Ruto.

This is far behind what the Jubilee government promised in 2013, that every child joining Standard One in 2014 would receive a solar-powered laptop.

Even then critics wondered what would happen to the pupils as they moved on to the next class. Would they continue receiving the laptops?  In 2016, the Information Communication and Technology Authority said on their website that the project had been expanded to target all learners in primary schools.

However, the learning experience has been found to have some hitches in terms of the quality of interactive learning material.

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT

On pay to teachers, Governor Joho implies the government has not been able to pay teachers’ salaries, which is a completely different matter from not meeting teachers’ demands for higher pay. On June 20, 2016, the Teachers Service Commission and Kenya National Union of Teachers signed a collective bargaining agreement.

Four months later, on October 25, 2016, another CBA was signed, which was supposed to increase teachers’ salaries by Sh13.7billion this year and last from 2017 to 2021.

However, according to the 2017 Appropriations Act, recurrent expenditure for the Teachers Service Commission is Sh201.36 billion, which is Sh7.24 billion more than the previous year’s allocation of Sh194billion, after the second supplementary budget.

That Sh7 billion increase is 53 per cent of the Sh13.7 billion that was supposed to cater for teacher’s salary increases, which means that the TSC allocation is insufficient to meet the increase. 

But in the 2017 Budget Speech, the Treasury Secretary, Henry Rotich, allocated Sh20 billion to meet the first phase of salary increases for all public servants. The government has made assurances that the pay increase for teachers will be met on July 1, which is 19 days away, and teachers are still waiting to see if the deal will be implemented.

The government has been able to get electricity to schools, and has also arrived at a collective bargaining agreement with teachers after a long strike, although teachers are yet to be paid. However, it has demonstrably fallen behind its ambitious 2013 laptop promise. Governor Joho’s claim is therefore unproven.