WRITES JAKOTAE OMORY FROM URIRI DISTRICT.
TENSION is building at Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) headquarters which is soon erupting to the full public glare unless urgent measures are taken in place.
The increase of retirement age from 55 years to 60 years have made the top three at KNUT headquarters to long to extend their term to 65 years. This has caused cold war between the top three and their assistants who had also whetted their appetite to ascend to the top leadership.
Realizing that their scene to extend their term is not bearing fruit the old guards have resorted to laying their hands in any property available at KNUT headquarters so as to help them contest in their respective constituencies in the coming General Election.
In an effort to get funds it is being alleged that the top three got bank overdraft of about 33 million without consulting their assistants.
This move has caused the delay in monthly remittance to the branches since then the T.S.C releases money, the bank has to recover their money and then these officials have to renegotiate a new deal of the overdraft.
This game of musical chairs has been there for a while until the worst prospect came to the fore.
The latest development is an attempt by the top three to go for 45 million loan and attach the KNUT office headquarters land title dead as a security.
This move has forced the assistant officers at the headquarters to seek help from the sub-branches to raise alarm bell for the teachers to know that very soon they will be operating from no headquarter like KUPPET.(a KNUT sister union for post Primary Education and Tertiary institutions.)
Surprisingly, the top three have also formed a group with the old NEC members and old branch officials to frustrate any effort to stop the syndicate.
Lastly, teachers must come up in arms to stop this move which may mark the end of the grand teachers union in Kenya.
Kenyan teachers should not forget Mahatma Gandhi’s quote “problem somewhere is the same as problem everywhere” so they should cross all the Ts and dot all the Is as far as blocking the syndicate because it will degenerate to KNUT sub-branches.
ENDS
boazomory@yahoo.com
In any transition with no proper guidelines,especially on retirement period and now that everyone is power hungry, there shall always arise a crisis.The problem emanates from Sam Ongeri who extended retirement period and hired fully trained teachers as interns.He is the one to sit down,think,and give proper guidelines otherwise you are yet to see things turn upside down.Secondly the National executive should always think about teachers and the objectives of the union.There are people who almost lost their lives because of the UNION,they should at no time think of finishing the UNION.