The price of a job: How Kenya’s public employment system became a political marketplace
National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang'ula
When appointment letters pass through politicians’ hands before reaching the teachers who earned them, merit itself is on the line
By Levis Wangamati
A trained teacher in Bomet County sold land and took out a bank loan to pay for a job that never came. Elsewhere, Members of Parliament have described appointment letters — handed to them in batches at State House — reportedly changing hands for as much as KSh400,000 before they ever reach a classroom.
These are not isolated failures of a bureaucracy. According to National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula, they point to something far more troubling: a system in which access to public employment has become entangled with money, political connections and loyalty.
For a trained teacher, an appointment letter should be the reward for years of study, qualification and patience — the moment at which education finally translates into a career. Instead, the latest allegations suggest that for some desperate job seekers, that letter has become something to be bought, borrowed for or pursued through political networks.
Speaking to MPs at a legislative retreat in Naivasha, Wetang’ula described a practice that teachers’ unions had previously alleged but that his remarks brought into unusually sharp political focus. MPs, he said, travel to State House, where they are handed batches of Teachers Service Commission appointment letters — sometimes 20 at a time — to distribute to constituents. He further alleged that some legislators sell those opportunities.
The allegation landed at a particularly combustible moment. The TSC had just advertised 20,000 permanent teaching vacancies, drawing renewed attention from thousands of trained, unemployed teachers who have spent years waiting for an opportunity to enter the classroom. For them, Wetang’ula’s remarks raise a troubling possibility: that merit is competing with a parallel, unofficial channel in which proximity to political power determines who gets through the door.
The question, therefore, is not simply who allegedly sold a teaching job or who allegedly paid for one. It is why politicians would have access to TSC appointment letters at all, and what that says about the boundary between a constitutionally established commission and the political networks seeking to control its opportunities.
If MPs were indeed receiving batches of appointment letters at State House for distribution in their constituencies, who authorised that arrangement? Who selected the beneficiaries? What criteria were applied? And why should a public appointment pass through a politician before reaching the person who earned it?
Those questions cannot be answered by blaming a few allegedly corrupt individuals. Wetang’ula’s account was not the first crack in the wall.
Months earlier, Murang’a Woman Representative Betty Njeri Maina described a similar arrangement in strikingly specific terms. She said that she and 11 other MPs from Kiambu had each received 20 letters — 220 in total — to distribute in their constituencies, and that an MP’s absence from State House when the letters were handed out meant their constituents would simply miss out.
The significance is not merely the number 220. It is that the allegation predates Wetang’ula’s remarks and describes the same mechanism: political representatives receiving public employment letters for distribution among constituents. Taken together, the accounts demand urgent scrutiny of how appointment letters are generated, transferred and ultimately delivered.
If Maina’s account raises questions about scale, Kitutu Masaba MP Clive Gisairo Arama’s account raises questions about motive. Arama has alleged that he was denied letters distributed to some colleagues and, when he asked why, was told it was because he was not aligned with the government.
It is a small claim with a potentially enormous implication. If public employment opportunities can be withheld from an elected representative on the basis of political alignment, the issue moves beyond individual rent-seeking. It suggests that access to public jobs has itself become a political lever.
A public job is supposed to follow qualification, a transparent recruitment process and the needs of the institution — not the political proximity of the applicant’s MP. That is where the story moves from corruption into patronage: the possibility that public employment is being used not merely for private enrichment, but to reward political loyalty.
Then there is Bomet, where the alleged mechanism is different but the vulnerability is the same. A recruitment cartel allegedly operating through TSC offices in the county is accused of taking money from job seekers for teaching positions that never materialised. Some victims reportedly sold land or borrowed money in the belief that they were paying for legitimate employment.
The promised jobs never came.
Where the alleged State House pipeline describes patronage, the Bomet case describes extortion. One allegedly turns access to genuine opportunities into political currency; the other allegedly manufactures opportunities that do not exist and sells them to desperate applicants. Different mechanisms, the same weakness: a recruitment system in which people feel that the official route may not be enough, and that finding a broker, an intermediary or a political connection is simply how things work.
The government’s response has been swift in words, if not yet in consequence. Education Cabinet Secretary Julius Ogamba described the selling of employment letters as criminal and said the ministry would work with TSC to address the problem, with greater transparency in recruitment data presented as one solution.
Teachers’ unions — including KNUT, KUPPET and Kethawa — have also demanded accountability and challenged political interference in teacher recruitment. Their argument is straightforward: merit, equity and transparency should determine who gets hired, not political proximity.
But condemnation is only the beginning. What Kenyans need now is evidence of institutional action.
Were appointment letters distributed outside the ordinary TSC recruitment process? If so, how many, and who authorised the distribution? Which constituencies received them? How were beneficiaries selected? And what happened to the applicants who followed the official process but were never connected to a politician?
These are not partisan questions. They are basic accountability questions. An independent investigation should establish exactly what happened, rather than leaving the country to choose between competing political accounts.
The TSC is a constitutionally established body with a specific mandate to recruit and employ teachers. That independence exists for a reason: public employment should not become an extension of whichever political network happens to control government. If appointment letters can be routed through political offices before reaching successful applicants, that independence is placed under serious strain.
And the cost is not abstract. It falls first on the trained graduates who followed the rules — the teachers who completed their studies, applied through official channels and waited, sometimes for years, while others allegedly found a faster route through money or political connections. It falls on applicants who cannot raise hundreds of thousands of shillings for a job that should never have carried a price. It falls on constituents whose access to public employment may depend not on their qualifications, but on whether their representative is considered politically acceptable.
And eventually, it falls on the institution itself.
A recruitment commission cannot retain public trust if citizens begin to believe that its formal process is merely the front door, while the real entrance lies somewhere inside the political establishment. Once that belief takes hold, every successful applicant becomes vulnerable to suspicion, every unsuccessful applicant has reason to question the process, and merit itself begins to lose its meaning.
That is the danger Kenya must confront as the 2027 General Election approaches. Political parties will negotiate alliances, politicians will mobilise supporters and candidates will promise jobs, development and opportunity. But public institutions must not become campaign machinery.
A government job is not a political gift. An appointment letter is not a constituency development project. And an MP should not have to decide which qualified citizen deserves employment. The system must decide — transparently and on merit.
The latest allegations therefore demand more than outrage. They demand an answer to a fundamental question: who controls access to Kenya’s public jobs?
Because the teacher in Bomet who sold land and borrowed money for a job that never came is not a footnote to this story. She is the story.
Her experience shows what happens when a system meant to reward preparation begins to reward proximity — when desperation becomes an opportunity for exploitation, and when public employment starts behaving like private property. The greatest cost of such a system is not simply the money lost.
It is the belief that doing everything right may no longer be enough.
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