The Teacher Service Commission (TSC) is the employer of teachers in Kenya.
The abuse of school girls by teachers has been a cancer in both primary and secondary schools in Kenya, where male teachers prey on the young girls (minors) and defile them. When a girl is defiled by a teacher and becomes pregnant, the teacher pays some amount of money to the parents and the case is dropped. Also for a long time, the teacher’s bribed their way out of jail and the poor girls became mothers at a tender age or were infected with STIs or HIV.
To know the seriousness of this matter, one has just to pay attention to school children during drama festivals in the country where children compose poems; songs and role plays expressing their displeasure/disappointment in the ways in which teachers abuse instead of mentor them. They explain in fine detail how far the teachers go to groom them and finally abuse them.
This will no longer be the case because the Teachers Service Commission has put into place strict rules to deal with teachers who abuse their students sexually. In fact 22 teachers have been deregistered from the Teacher Service Commission and their names gazette in the Kenya Gazette (the Kenya gazette is an official publication by the government of Kenya) for abusing students. These teachers will serve as examples to others that the government is serious with protection of minors.
A strict warning has been sent across that any school or anyone who employs a deregistered teacher will be liable to a fine of not less than 100,000, KES and /or imprisonment term of not less than two years or both. The Teacher Service Commission came to this decision after accusing the head teachers/ principles of covering up for the abusive teachers.
Read the full story here.
Sr. Damiana Kasoo