In protest of salary payment delays, all 17 of the teachers hired by the Board of Management (BoM) at Marereni Secondary School in Kilifi County are sleeping at the school.
Mwasambu Pole, a teacher, stated that they have been sleeping at the school since Friday in order to seek the arrears on their three-month wage. He said that the delays also had an impact on non-teaching staff.
Principal Mr. Amin Mohamed Karanja informed the teachers that the school did not have the funds to pay them, thus they made the decision to camp at the school.
Speaking with the media on Saturday morning, the teachers claimed that their income delays had left them unable to cover their families’ expenses for housing rent, health insurance, and other requirements.
”The school principal issued a notice indicating that we will be paid in January. We, as BoM teachers, have been forced to teach with no pay for several months,” Pole lamented.
He claimed that after receiving written word from the school principal that they would be paid the following year, they spent the night in the school’s compound.
“How we will survive during this long holiday without pay?” said Munga, adding that some of their colleagues have taken up menial jobs to survive.
Another teacher, Ms. Annet Munga, claimed that due to rent arrears, she has resorted to playing a game of cat and mouse with her landlord. “I’m about to get kicked out of this place. We end up being paupers,”
According to Ms. Munga, the majority of BoM instructors in Kilifi have experimented with different income-generating ventures, such as burning charcoal and operating boda bodas.
After journalists were refused access to the school premises, attempts to speak with the principal of the institution failed.
We found out that the instructors insisted he pay them before he went, so the school principal also spent the night in his office.
