Saturday, May 13, 2023 – President William Ruto’s move to deduct 3% of all government employees to fund his housing project is turning out to be a nightmare for him.
This is after many government workers vowed never to allow Ruto to touch their salaries.
The latest to add their voice to the debate are teachers, who have opposed the housing fund introduced by Ruto.
While addressing the press, the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (KUPPET) argued that a number of its members already owned houses, demanding that they should be exempted from the three per cent deduction.
“We reject the three per cent levy because our teachers have already constructed houses in their rural homes. While those who have not constructed houses have already taken up loans for the same,” Jacob Karura, the head of the KUPPET Embu branch, told the press.
Furthermore, they argued that the time it would take to pay for the proposed houses was unrealistic for the teachers.
“A decent affordable house for a teacher costs about Ksh1.2 million. If you do the math, you get that a teacher will pay for that house for approximately 66 years. As teachers, we have our own plans,” another member argued.
Additionally, the union opined that teachers had their tastes and ideas of where to retire, repeal with the design of the houses they wanted.
Some members further argued it was unreasonable to ask them to leave their rural houses where they rear livestock to live in a highrise apartment with their goats, chickens, and cows.
“We do want to live in those highrises, they will disadvantage teachers,” the members added.
As a result, they issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to intervene and ensure teachers are exempt from taxation, failure to which the union threatened to strike.
This comes even as Ruto defended the deduction explaining that politicians were also subjected to a similar model.
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