By George Obulutsa
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya’s economy cannot fund the wage increases striking teachers are calling for and meeting their demands would require hiking taxes or the government borrowing more cash, the country’s finance minister said on Wednesday.
A nationwide teaching strike is now in its third week and has paralysed state-run primary and secondary schools, while university lecturers joined in later bringing public higher education institutions to a halt.
The lowest paid government teachers take home just $160 a month while Kenya’s lawmakers, among the highest paid in the world, rake in about $10,000 every month.
Finance Minister Robinson Githae said meeting the teachers’ demands alone would cost the state coffers an extra 400 billion shillings. Githae said he had no power under the east African country’s new constitution to alter the funding quotas allocated in the 2012/13 budget.
“It is not a popularity contest. We must avoid a wage spiral which is what is going to come,” Githae told a news conference.
Githae said that all the money the Kenya Revenue Authority collects in taxes already goes to recurrent expenditure, with development expenditure coming from other sources like borrowing or grants.
He said for the government to meet all pay rise demands, it would have to borrow more or increase income tax and excise duties.
“Tell me, I sign the agreement, increase taxation and give them what they want. It will be the easiest, so that we all suffer,” he said.
“We have short term gains, yes. If I accepted (to seek) 400 billion shillings, which is being demanded by the teachers, I would be the most popular person on the streets, but at what costs?”
Teachers from the 278,000-strong Kenya National Union of Teachers are demanding a 300 percent pay rise, while those of another, the Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers with 47,000 members are demanding a 100 percent increase.
“The government has enough funds to manage to pay the teachers’ pay hike. What we are demanding is very little,” Wilson Sossion, KNUT’s chairman, told Reuters.
“The teachers strike will continue despite government threats. The minister should inform teachers in a meeting that their demands for salary increments is unsustainable,” he said.
Last year, teachers also went on strike demanding that an extra 28,000 of their colleagues on short-term contracts be hired permanently.
Enrolment in Kenyan public schools rose sharply starting in 2003 after President Mwai Kibaki’s government introduced free primary and subsidised secondary education.
Kenya’s economy is seen expanding between 3.5-4.5 percent this year, the planning ministry says, from 4.4 percent in 2011 and there are concerns a significant increase in public wages might fuel inflationary pressures.
“I have to look at the welfare of this economy. It’s a struggle, big big struggle. It means our economy is still fragile. It needs to be massaged if we are to proceed with any upward growth,” Githae said.
Doctors across the country also started a nationwide strike on Wednesday, joining their colleagues working in Kenya’s three largest hospitals who are demanding better allowances that they say the government had already agreed to.
“This is not a new demand. This discussion started and concluded way back before Kenya’s finance minister read his budget in June,” Boniface Chitayi, secretary general of the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union, told Reuters.