Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has said no funds were allocated for the hiring of the Junior Secondary School teacher interns on permanent and pensionable terms.

Speaking during a TV interview on Thursday, August 22, 2024, Mbadi noted that the hiring of 20,000 JSS teachers would require budget adjustments which the state was not ready for.

This comes just weeks after President William Ruto assured the JSS interns that they would be absorbed by the end of this year.

“We don’t have resources to recruit JSS teachers on permanent and for the additional 20,000 that was reduced in the estimates. There is a shortfall of about Ksh13 billion,” Mbadi said, “There is no money availed for conversions unless we do budget adjustments which we really don’t have space for. This year has been challenging. We really had to look around and see how we can raise the money we made available for teachers for their salary adjustments.”

Ruto’s promise to JSS interns

In July, Ruto promised that the over 46,000 JSS interns would be absorbed on permanent and pensionable terms despite the revenue shortfalls occasioned by the withdrawal of the Finance Bill 2024.

“I want to tell all our JSS teachers that despite the challenges we have with the Finance Bill, we are going to make sure that we confirm all teachers before the end of this year to ensure they serve under permanent and pensionable terms as we agreed,” Ruto said on July 10, 2024, while in Kajiado County.

The fate of the interns now hangs in the balance after the High Court ruled in favour of the Teachers’ Service Commission (TSC), ordering them to continue with their current contracts.

TSC had argued that an earlier ruling by the Employment and Labour Relations Court (ELRC) had thrown a spanner in the works of their budgetary allocations.

The teachers’ employer told the court that it did not have the budget to absorb all the 46,000 JSS interns on a permanent basis.

The development comes ahead of a planned strike by the teachers’ unions which was scheduled to commence on Monday, August 26, 2024, as schools reopen.

Mbadi noted that the government had gone out of its way to source for funds required to meet the demands raised by the teachers.

The employment of 20,000 JSS interns was among the unaddressed issues raised by the teachers’ unions as the basis of the strike.