TSC Salary Increment For Teachers To Be Implemented In August

TSC Pay Rise News 2023 show that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has already paid the salaries of teachers for the month of July. Several banks and saccos, notably Equity, KCB, and Absa, have remitted teachers’ pay.

However, it is evident that the government has deducted money from teachers’ salaries by enacting higher NHIF rates.

In order to increase pay equity, President William Ruto suggested amendments to the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) on June 26, 2023.

Kenyans will contribute 2.75 per cent of their gross income to the national insurance, according to the Head of State’s proposal.

This is what has had an impact on teachers’ and government workers’ July salaries. The majority of elementary school teachers in lower cadres saw their salaries drop by 230 sh.

Teachers who were interns were subject to the new charges. Junior secondary school teachers who previously got a monthly stipend after deductions of sh 19,124 now receive sh 18170 as a result of the revised NHIF rate.

Primary school teachers are now paid roughly Sh 13,200 instead of the previous Sh 14,000 per year.

A court ruling delaying the 2023 Finance Act’s implementation, however, barred deductions from the housing fund, whose cap was set at 1.5% of gross income.

It has since been claimed that arrears will be paid to teachers’ salaries in August, despite President William Ruto’s declaration that TSC would pay teachers’ salaries with an increase.

This is the case because the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has not completed the review process to account for the pay rise.

On June 30, President Ruto announced that teachers and other state personnel would begin getting their wage raises this month.

The public involvement exercise was finished two weeks ago, and now SRC is working on the evaluation.

After the commission publishes the new salary in the gazette, the government departments in charge of paying teachers and other civil officials would then be able to implement the rise.

Sources claim that tomorrow when many workers anticipate receiving their salaries, is the earliest the reviews might be concluded.

Another issue for the labour is the amount they would receive after the rise.

“The increase’s implementation date is quite important. According to a source, even if they don’t get the hike this month, they will still get it after July.

One of the terms of the Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers’ (Kuppet) agreement with the President was the suspension of the Finance Act 2023, the implementation of which has been put on hold by the High Court in response to a petition filed by Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah.

The court’s decision guarantees that the new 1.5% housing fee imposed by the Act won’t apply to employees. The deadline for it to go into effect was this month.

Kuppet Secretary-General Akello Misori has raised a red flag over the delay and claims that both the SRC and the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) are to blame.

During a five-hour “consultative meeting” that Kuppet and SRC purportedly had with Dr Ruto in May at State House, the President is said to have assured authorities that teachers will receive a minimum 10% pay raise “upon the passage of the 2023-2024 Finance Bill.”

This is a concern because, he continued, we can be deceived and discover that it is not 10% or 12% as we had thought.

Salary Increment for Teachers to be Implemented in August With arrears

Many teachers reported that their pay stubs had not yet been put on the payment site.

Despite our repeated appeals to the TSC for a review of the terms of reference of the 2021–2025 collective agreement, the SRC and TSC’s inaction has caused a delay. When the President gave his final consent to the programme, we thought that the Treasury was on board and that the SRC had given other public employees—particularly the civil servants—the opportunity to discuss their compensation with them. It was made very plain by the President that this required an increase of between 7 and 10%. Mr Misori said there shouldn’t be any delays.

The union had originally asked for a hike of between 30% and 70% from the president, but they ultimately settled on 10%.

Mr Misori asked the commissions to complete the salary increase procedure because the increment had already been agreed upon by the union and the president.

He denied that it had anything to do with their endorsement of the Finance Bill 2023, which was being discussed at the time in Parliament, and insisted that the agreement had never been in writing.

Mr Misori lamented that, regrettably, and in spite of these assurances, “the TSC and SRC are still going in circles while teachers are struggling under the weight of higher taxes and high inflation that the government promised to shield them from.”

According to Dr Ruto, the decision to evaluate salary will not benefit high-ranking government personnel such as himself, his deputy Rigathi Gachagua, MPs, Cabinet secretaries, chief secretaries, speakers of the house, or judges, among others.

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