By Arnold Ageta
Nyamira KNUT Executive Secretary Evans Obiri has once again raised concerns about the decision of the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to onboard teachers to the Social Health Authority (SHA), stating the Commission has subjected teachers to unnecessary medical service problems.
Speaking to the press in his Nyamira office, Mr. Obiri said that the Commission erred in its decision and should rescind it if they truly care about the welfare of teachers.
“How can TSC force us into SHA yet the TSC secretariat staff are covered by a different medical scheme?” he asked. “Why did they terminate Minet from offering services to teachers yet it was effective compared to SHA?”
Mr. Obiri questioned why teachers are isolated from the medical scheme which is now being advertised, yet they both work for the same TSC.
“If SHA is indeed good for us, then the TSC secretariat should also migrate to SHA, which they are forcing us to migrate to, yet they are scared of using the same,” he argued.
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He regretted that from Tuesday night until yesterday (Wednesday) 9:00 a.m., teachers countrywide were not attended to in various health facilities because SHA claimed that the TSC had not remitted money.
We had hoped earlier that the migration of teachers to SHA would be better than Minet, since TSC was really fighting for the migration to happen. He said, contrary to their hopes, SHA is posing numerous challenges to teachers who seek health services.
“For instance, I have one case who is in Nairobi’s Coptic Hospital who is in need of specialized surgery, but he was told to pay KSh. 100,000 to receive the service and was not attended to,” he lamented.
Mr. Obiri added that there are unsolved riddles with SHA that have not been resolved for it to serve the people of Kenya as required.
“I have witnessed similar cases treated differently. One is attended to but the other is not attended to, yet they were seeking similar services,” he observed.
He warned that if SHA is not going to fully cater for the teachers’ health care and access to medical services, they will be forced to denounce it and go to the streets to demand for a better medical care provider.
“TSC should move with speed and monitor SHA to make sure it is providing health care services to teachers because currently, teachers are facing many challenges in using SHA,” he said.
“We, Nyamira teachers, at no point agreed to migrate to SHA; this was imposed on us by TSC and, funny enough, no public participation was done before migrating us,” he explained.
He reiterated their willingness to go to the streets to demand for better medical care provision if SHA continues to mistreat teachers who seek medical services under the Authority.
“We thought that SHA was going to outshine Minet in service provision the way they were forcing us to migrate, but it has proved to be the worst, even than NHIF,” he said.
JSS Intern Teachers
Meanwhile, Mr. Obiri has criticized the government move to abandon the earlier plan of confirming JSS intern teachers on to a permanent basis in the ongoing recruitment.
He said the government had promised to confirm them first before embarking on another recruitment exercise of more internship teachers.
“I acknowledge the government’s efforts to employ many teachers, but I am concerned about the welfare of the current JSS intern teachers who were supposed to be confirmed in this financial year,” he opined.
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He has equally challenged the current internship programme saying it is not anchored in any law and asked for the scrapping of the programme.
“We as the Teachers’ Union, we ask the government to consider employing these teachers on a permanent basis to motivate them in their work,” he said.
Because the intern JSS teachers are poorly paid and taxed heavily, Mr. Obiri said, they are demotivated to teach and this will soon affect the quality of education in the country as the new curriculum takes shape.
If the JSS teachers are employed on a permanent basis, the quality of education will improve and even make school administration be easy and effective.
“How do you expect service delivery to be good when you do not care about the welfare of those who are providing that service?” he challenged TSC.
