Mr Charles Achol, a teacher, is distraught.
When he received his employment letter from the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) in January 2021, he was elated to land a State job at last.
However, his joy was short-lived when he was posted to LafeyBoarding Primary School in Mandera County.
Deep down I knew I would be posted in a hardship area. I was posted on January 6,2021 immediately after the Covid pandemic when schools reopened. Getting employed by TSC is not easy unless you use the route I used which is targeting a hardship area, said Mr Achol.
Mr Achol, who now runs a fish kiosk in Nairobi's Dandora estate to make ends meet,requested a transfer from the TSC after three years of working in the terror-prone area. However, he was turned down.
When his application was rejected, Mr Achol, 31, decided to leave the school which is situated in the last town towards the Somalia border due to insecurity.
He was among the more than 100 non-local teachers in the North Eastern Region working in Mandera, WajirandGarissa counties who asked for transfers due to insecurity in August last year, but were later interdicted for failing to report to work.
I suffered for three years, and then I decided to ask my employer for a transfer because of rampant Shabaab attacks. However, it was rejected. I received letters from the TSC including warnings, show cause and lastly interdiction,' he narrated.
When schools reopened, they received letters from TSC directing them to report back to their workstations by September 7, 2023 failure to which disciplinary action shall be taken against them.
TSC said it would be impossible to transfer non-local teachers out of the North Eastern region due toa lackof suitable replacements. The region has more than 3,000 non-local teachers.
In January this year, TSC reinstated the teachers and ordered them to return to their workstations.
The town where I was working was threatened by Shabaabmilitia. So when you are in that town, you can never be at peace. There were no houses to rent because we were discriminated againstas non-locals, he told .
Mr Achol who hails from Siaya County said he used to sleep in a ditch alongside police officers. He said most teachers deserted their houses due to insecurity and others resorted to sleeping inside police camps.
They went to court and he was given a months suspension which ended on December 4, 2023.
From there, we were waiting for posting letters. Others got their reposting letters to Mandera but unfortunately, I did not receive mine. This made me, alongside others to petition the National Assembly. The Parliamentary Committee on Education promised to give us feedback. Weve not heard from the Julius Melly-chaired committee to date, he added.
The 120 teachers went again to court in February this year, seeking an order to stop reposting letters but TSC requested for more time. The teachers employer was granted another month that elapsed in March.
The judge allowed TSC and their lawyer to settle the matter out of court.
We were given a month to ensure the matter is settled out of court andregister our consent with the court before April 5. TSC was mandated to look for us, unfortunately, they did not so the window period elapsed. So we are at a crossroads, said the P1 certificate teacher with a Diploma in ECDE.
The teacher says they do not know their fate because no arbitration has ever taken place.
We are just at home jobless and hopeless because you cannot look for a job in a private school, you dont know whether you will be employed. Once your TSC number is keyed into a computer of a serious private school, it will reveal all your information that you are a TSC employee under interdiction, he added.
However, some of his colleagues decided to go back to teaching in the region after losing hope of getting transferred.
Achol once tried his hand in the matatu sector but says that the vehicle got into an accident and was written off.
I am now selling fish in Dandora to get money to feed my wife and three children. What can you do? said the Kiswahili language teacher.
A similar fate befell his colleague from Baringo, whose identity we cannot reveal for ethicalreasons.
The teacher left Mandera on July 26, 2023, after his friend, another teacher and around two police officers were murdered by militants.
When they were killed, there was tension in the area, so I decided to run away to save my life. By then I was teaching at Malkamari, in Banisa. So I went to TSC headquarters to explain the situation. They directed m
