Member of Parliament of Kitutu Masaba Clive Gisairo has urged the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to consider and give priority to transfer requests from teachers who are single parents.
He said that he is concerned about many teachers who have lost their spouses and have had to face difficulties and TSC was relying only on the transfer portal without considering applications on a case-by-case basis.
Despite most of the affected teachers had requested transfers to their home counties to care for their children, TSC has ignored their requests.
Gisairo called on the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Nancy Macharia to serve the National Assembly Departmental Committee on Education with complete details of all teachers who had requested transfers after the abolishment of the delocalization policy.
Among these are details of when transfer requests were made through the portal of TSC.
During a committee sitting, the MP said that some teachers had lost their spouses and needed to take care of their children as single parents. This, in his view, was the reason why they submitted applications for transfers.
Teachers with these concerns who applied for transfers through the TSC portal were yet to be transferred. The MP urged TSC to have a human face when dealing with teachers’ requests and to consider death certificates that have been submitted by single-parent teachers.
MP Gisairo wondered why TSC does not provide details of the dates when teachers started applying through the transfer portal.
TSC had told the Committee that 14,733 teachers had applied for transfers through the portal by the 30th of November 2022. However, it was not revealed how many had applied after that deadline.
The MP’s appeal gave insight into the plight of single-parent teachers who lost their spouses and needed to take care of their children.