Teachers Strike May Be Test for Kenya Regime

Thousands of Kenyan teachers began an indefinite strike Monday that disrupted the beginning of national examinations for more than half a million students.

The strike, protesting government refusal to implement pay raises awarded by a presidential committee last year, highlights growing worker dissatisfaction with a government that acknowledged earlier this year that it was broke.

With negotiations between education officials and the 260,000-member teachers union at an impasse, analysts warned that the standoff could trigger widespread labor unrest.

“Despite the fact that the stature of teachers has declined in recent years, they are still opinion-makers in the rural areas,” said John Githongo, director of the African Strategic Research Institute, a think tank based in the Kenyan capital. “The teachers have the power to make it quite difficult for the government.”

The strike is the latest manifestation of frustration from a nation sinking deeper into poverty. The 1998 United Nations Human Development Report, an overview of economic and social development, ranked Kenya far down the list--137th of the 174 countries rated.

Labor unrest has been extensive in recent months. Nurses, bankers and postal workers have either gone on strike or threatened to walk off the job. Casual laborers, farmers and university students have staged protests to press for better pay, grants and working conditions.

People are fed up with high living costs, unemployment and a collapsed social security network, analysts say. Most blame official corruption, misuse of public funds and mismanagement of the lucrative coffee and tea industries.

Kenya and neighboring Uganda and Tanzania recently ranked among the 13 most corrupt nations in a field of 85 surveyed by Transparency International, which tracks official corruption worldwide. Though pressure from international donors led Kenya to establish an anti-graft body at the end of last year, the authority is in turmoil and the director’s jurisdiction is under review.

Going on strike is “a matter of principle,” for teachers, Githongo said. “They are reminding people that the reason why the government doesn’t have any money is because it stole it. There is a feeling among them that we have to fight against this sometime.”

Critics of the strike fear thousands of public high school students will be denied the opportunity to enroll in universities if they cannot not take the exams.

Teachers earn between $45 and $480 a month and rank among the lowest-paid Kenyan professionals.

They were promised a 150% to 200% pay raise last October, three months before the country’s general elections, after two weeks of strikes that paralyzed learning in the country’s 19,000 public primary and secondary schools. The raises were to be granted incrementally over several years.

But while the first raises were backdated to July 1997 and granted, the government says it has no money to make further increases.

“As a result of the changed economic situation, we are simply not able to pay,” Education Minister Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka said.

The ministry would need at least $100 million more than its current salaries budget to grant the raises, he said.

“If we have to meet their demands, it will mean that we have to increase taxation. And most Kenyans don’t want that,” Musyoka said.

Ambrose Adongo, secretary-general of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, said his organization would be willing to renegotiate the raises because of the country’s economic troubles but wouldn’t accept a “wholesale suspension.”

Supporters of the teachers strike argue that the government should have realized that it couldn’t pay the salaries it promised. A few months before the raises were granted, the International Monetary Fund had suspended a $220-million loan, citing corruption and the failure of the government to undertake political reforms. This eroded foreign investor confidence and was followed by the systematic withholding of bilateral aid, throwing the country into recession.

The El Nino weather phenomenon devastated agriculture and destroyed infrastructure, while ethnic violence in the country’s coastal region triggered the virtual collapse of tourism, Kenya’s second most important foreign currency earner after tea.