Kilifi ECDE teachers demand better pay and working conditions

Kilifi CECM for Education and ICT Felkin Kaingu. ECDE teachers in the county are demanding for better pay and improved working conditions.

Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) teachers in Kilifi County have demanded for better working conditions and remuneration, claiming that they had stayed in one job group since they were employed several years ago.

Speaking during a five-day Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) training for more than 342 ECDE teachers from across the county that was organized by the Aga Khan Foundation in Malindi town, the teachers now want the county government to also introduce hardship and commuter allowances to their colleagues working in hardship areas of Ganze, Kaloleni, Magarini and parts of Malindi sub-counties.

Naomi Muye, an ECDE teacher at Fudumulo ECDE in Ganze Ward, said most schools in the area had only one ECDE teacher employed by the county government yet the number of learners is high.

“There is a scarcity of teachers and I want to urge the county government to post more teachers in ECDEs in remote areas since some schools have only one teacher handling very many students,” she said.

She added that due to rampant poverty in the area, teachers employed by school managements normally abscond duty due to lack of payment since parents can hardly afford.

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Her sentiments were echoed by Athman Rashid, a teacher at Bengoni ECDE in Bamba Ward, who claimed that they were mistreated for not getting salaries that match their education status and workload.

“We have no hardship allowance and when it comes to salaries, there are no promotions and teachers with degrees are being paid salaries of the same scale with those teachers with certificates. In Bamba Ward alone, we have 4,635 pupils against 54 teachers,” he said.

The Chief Officer for Education and Vocational Training Frederick Nguma, who was the chief guest at the event, acknowledged that the county was facing a shortage of ECDE teachers and that their pay was not matching their workload and education.

He said that the county has 1,268 employed ECDE teachers and that in this financial year they will employ 150 others so that they can attend to more than 60,000 learners across the county.

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“Teachers employed in our ECDEs are very few compared to the population of pupils and we are going to employ 150 teachers this financial year in trying to bridge the deficit,” he said.

Professor Maina Kioko, the coordinator of the Progressive Education Department at Aga Khan Foundation, said that they had managed to train more than 3,000 teachers.

“We realized that ECDE teachers never get progressive education and that is why we came for them. Our target was teachers in 1,800 ECDE centres across six counties of Mombasa, Kilifi, Lamu, Kwale, Tana River and Taita Taveta but we have gotten teachers from 2,200 schools hence surpassing our target,” he said.

By Nehemiah Okwembah

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