Skip to main content

Seal graft loopholes to efficiently fund future salary increments



The recent decision by the Supreme Court to back Industrial Court order and Court of Appeal’s ruling to award teachers a salary increment of 50-60 per cent was indeed a big win to all public teachers nationwide.

The National Treasury has since warned that the taxpayer will have to dig deep into his pockets to raise the Sh 17 billion required to effect teachers’ salary increment.
Just recently, the Auditor General, Edward Ouko raised the red flag over massive corruption in National and county governments. The Auditor in his report revealed that expenditures of up to Sh 67 billion were not backed up with proper documentation in counties and national government ministries.
PHOTO: Courtesy, Nation Media Group

This undeniably was not the first time that an Audit Report exposed graft in the government.
There have also been concerns about payment of ‘ghost workers’ and the government losing billions of shillings in procurement processes- the most recent being the National Youth Service (NYS) saga where reports emerged that at least Sh 826 million were illegally transferred to unknown bank accounts through procurement.

County officials have been reported to be spending lavishly in foreign trips, money which can be used to remunerate hard working employees such as teachers- who play a major role in nurturing talent and future generation leaders. Basically, teachers play a big role in children upbringing as the education system dictates that a child spends more time with the teacher in school than the parent.
The government should devise ways of appraising employees and motivate them- through monetary means, bearing in mind that the cost of living has gone up.

Therefore, to effect the Court’s directive to pay teachers a salary increment of 50-60 per cent, it will be prudent for the government to seal all loopholes of corruption to avoid leakage of taxpayers’ money into the wrong hands.
If our leaders walk the talk to fight graft, the common mwananchi will not have to pay more tax to finance salary increment of teachers or government employees.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Kenyan Reader

Have you ever asked yourself where the strong passion of reading goes to when one completes his/her Kenya certificate of secondary examinations ( KCSE )? Well, this is a rhetoric question that has always lingered in my mind for a very long time and I’ve finally taken my time to analyze the whole issue ( in my own perspective). I can still clearly recall me filling in the secondary school admission form, on that joyous day when I finally joined my “dream school”, St. Mary’s school, Yala. I wanted to be a doctor by profession when I grow up. That’s what I actually filled in the forms. Was that really my dream in life? Well by then I was a naive young but enthusiastic boy but I honestly didn’t know much about occupations. You must agree with me that at the age of 14 one doesn’t know much about careers or jobs. At that tender age one has role models, in most cases being parents, elderly family friends, and mostly uncles and aunts. Why did I say uncles and aunts? Most kids are always tol
8 comments
Read more

School tragedies call for divine intervention

Arsonist attacks, mass killings of students by Al Shabaab, drowning of students in the Indian Ocean and the most recent being students having sex in broad day light in a bus and taking alcohol and bhang. These are some of the unfortunate happenings that have dogged the education sector in the recent past. Have we in any way wronged God? I think it’s high time the country held a national prayer meeting to seek for forgiveness from Him. Maybe through this, the education sector will be set free from all these misfortunes. Second worst terrorist attack in Kenya On 2 nd April this year gunmen stormed the Garissa University College at 5am when the students were attending their morning preps and others were sleeping in their dormitories. The terrorists put the college under siege for almost 9 hours. Some of the survivors of Kenya’s second worst terrorist attack after the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya said that the gunmen set free Muslim students and murdered Christians. Ken
2 comments
Read more

Quality of education in varsities on the decline

Where there is smoke, there is fire. Employers in Kenya have in the recent past raised the red flag over Kenyan private and public universities breeding incompetent graduates. Many graduates have lost jobs, with their employers complaining of them not being able to deliver in the roles they have been assigned in the companies. But who is to blame for all this? As I was going through the Daily Nation newspaper on 4 th February 2014, I was greeted by some shocking investigative story on how students who fail in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations get admission in some private universities to pursue degree courses, contrary to the law. The story revealed that students who score as low as D (Plain) in KCSE get admitted to study degree courses in private universities. This is a clear indication that the universities are just after making money from students who do not qualify to join public universities through the Joint Admissions Board. With the rapi
1 comment
Read more