The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), which has about 200,000 members, wants the government to hire more teachers to cope with a surge in students after President Mwai Kibaki introduced free primary and secondary education.
“All public primary schools and about 40 percent of secondary schools are closed, and 11.1 million students have been affected,” union official David Okuta told Reuters.
“We want the teachers to have a peaceful strike. Our main aim is to withdraw labor. Let us withdraw our labor and let it bite.”
Worried parents gathered outside some schools hoping that talks between the unions and the government would break the deadlock in the crucial last term of the year, during which students sit national exams.
“I expect the government to move with speed and resolve the teachers strike ... our children (are due) to sit their national examination at the end of the year,” Mary Njoroge, a parent told Reuters outside a school in the capital Nairobi.
Private schools, where richer families mostly send their children, opened as planned as their teachers are not members of the union.
KNUT has said its members will remain on indefinite strike until the government agrees to hire 10,000 more teachers, as well as hire 18,000 teachers contracted on a short-term basis to be hired on a permanent basis.
About 200 teachers marched in downtown Nairobi carrying placards in support of the strike.
The teachers’ unions have said some 5.5 billion shillings ($58 million) allocated to hire the extra teachers was 2 billion shy of an amount agreed under a deal with the government to permanently employ all 28,000 teachers.
Some Kenyan politicians, media and critics have accused lawmakers of using about 2 billion shillings from a contingency fund set aside for national emergencies and teachers’ pay to cover back-taxes demanded by the tax authority.
