TSC boss Macharia says commission not involved in state officials’ distribution of job letters
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has denied claims that politicians have been handing out teacher appointment letters, insisting that the hiring process is handled professionally and within laid-out procedures.
TSC Chief Executive Nancy Macharia, while appearing before the National Assembly’s Committee on Constitutional Implementation, said she had only seen the allegations in media reports.
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“I read this in newspapers. It is giving TSC a bad name since we are the ones mandated to recruit teachers,” she told MPs on Tuesday.
Runyenjes MP Eric Muchangi had questioned whether the TSC was still fully in charge of teacher recruitment, noting that prominent figures had been spotted distributing appointment letters at public events.
“We have seen Cabinet secretaries with TSC employment letters at funerals and churches. This doesn’t augur well with the nation,” the MP said.
Muchangi added that the practice was damaging the integrity of the education system.
“We are setting a bad precedent, and we have to bring the controversial practice to an end. It is incumbent upon all of us to deal with this problem as a country,” he said.
Last month, Murang'a Woman Representative Betty Njeri Maina claimed that government-aligned MPs were recently given TSC employment letters to distribute to their constituents.
Teachers' unions have condemned the practice, saying it undermines meritocracy and denies deserving Kenyans opportunities in a country struggling with high unemployment among trained teachers.
"We were called to State House, and I will say it openly. We were given letters for the employment of teachers. I went with eleven MPs from Kiambu, and each was given twenty letters, totalling 220 letters," Maina said.
She further alleged that MPs who failed to attend the State House meeting had disadvantaged their constituents by not securing job allocations.
Her remarks came at a time when the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) had asked the TSC to revoke the recently published teacher promotions, citing unfair distribution.
The union claimed that regions with high teacher populations had been short-changed.
This was after TSC published a list of 25,252 teachers who have been promoted to various grades. The list, accessible on the TSC website, included successful applicants from interviews conducted earlier this year.
TSC had advertised the vacancies in late 2024, with 5,690 teachers applying for promotions in November and 19,943 in December. However, 381 vacancies remain unfilled.
Acting KUPPET Secretary-General Moses Nthurima said the union's national executive board had received multiple complaints from teachers who felt unfairly sidelined.
He noted that the primary concern was the equal distribution of the 25,252 vacancies across all 47 counties, regardless of disparities in staffing levels.
“The clear implication is that teachers in some counties were highly favoured, while their counterparts in densely populated counties continue to pile up on merit lists due to high competition among qualified candidates,” Nthurima said.
KUPPET called for a review of the promotion process to ensure fairness, advocating for a merit-based approach that considers staffing levels in different counties.
The National Treasury allocated Sh1 billion to the commission for the promotions, though the TSC had initially requested Sh2 billion.
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