The Teachers Service Commission(TSC) has come out firing, flatly dismissing claims made by National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula that President William Ruto has been issuing teacher employment letters to Members of Parliament for distribution and sale, insisting that the constitutional mandate to recruit and employ teachers rests solely and exclusively with the Commission.
The TSC statement came two days after Wetangula dropped a bombshell on the public, alleging that MPs were being ferried to State House where Ruto personally hands them batches of TSC appointment letters to take back to their constituencies.
Wetangula had also complained that instead of distributing the letters freely, MPs were turning around and selling them to desperate unemployed teachers at prices of up to Sh400,000 per slot, a revelation that sent shockwaves across the country and sparked a national conversation about the commercialisation of public sector jobs.
But the TSC, under the leadership of its CEO Eveleen Mitei, has now moved to distance itself from the entire saga, insisting that all employment letters are issued strictly through the Commission’s established recruitment procedures and applicable guidelines, with no involvement from political offices whatsoever.
“The Commission wishes to clarify that the statement is not true and is misleading. The recruitment and employment of registered teachers, including the issuance of employment letters, is a constitutional mandate of the Teachers Service Commission,” the Commission said in its statement.
And here is where the story gets deeply uncomfortable for both the TSC and the Speaker. If Wetangula was lying, he is the Speaker of the National Assembly, one of the most senior constitutional office holders in the land, and fabricating a story of this magnitude about the President of Kenya issuing government jobs as political favours would be a scandal of extraordinary proportions. He would need to retract, apologise and face consequences.
But if the TSC is the one being economical with the truth, then the Commission is covering up one of the most brazen acts of constitutional violation and institutionalised corruption in Kenya’s recent history, with unemployed teachers paying hundreds of thousands of shillings for jobs that are being auctioned by politicians while the constitutional body responsible for protecting the integrity of that process looks the other way.
One of them is lying. And given that Wetangula made his remarks openly, on camera, in full public view, with specifics about the process, the amounts and the individuals involved, the burden of proof now falls heavily on the TSC to explain not just what it says the law requires, but what is actually happening on the ground.
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