Press Release
Labour Unrest Won't End Under the Exploitative Capitalist Ideology

Primary and Secondary school teachers in Kenya have started another strike which is the seventh since 2007. They are complaining about the move by the government to deny them their allowances totaling to Kshs. 40 billion as promised in the Gazette Notice Number 534 of 1997. The teachers are also demanding the government employ more teachers to compensate for the big shortage of teachers. The current situation being witnessed will continue as more workers have threatened to strike.

In light of these, Hizb ut Tahrir / East Africa would like to highlight the following:

This strike which has taken a new dimension in demonstration is a clear indicator that teachers and other workers go through a lot of oppression in the country. The cry for salaries and allowances is due to the hardship in living conditions whereby more than half of Kenyans leave on less than one dollar per day. As the government avoids its responsibility to cater for the basic needs of its citizens, workers' salaries cannot be able to satisfy their basic needs. This hardship in living conditions is because the Kenyan government implements the evil Capitalist economic system which concentrates on production of resources so that they remain in the hands of the wealthy few. This is usually clear in Capitalist governments which exploit the public by levying taxes on nearly everything but when it comes to cater for their salaries, they refuse claiming that the economy is in bad shape!! At the same time, the government used the backdoor to appease the greedy needs of MPs and Senators by paying MPs a total of one million per month and a car loan of five million to buy luxury cars. This is Capitalism. It only knows how to collect money from the public which ends in the hands of a few!

Concerning the shortage of teachers in schools which is now estimated at four teachers per school, this is among many problems bedeviling public schools including lack of classrooms which forces students to learn under tree shades! This is denying children their basic right to access better education as claimed by the Constitution of Kenya. But as Hizb states more often, that man-made constitutions are made in the morning and disregarded in the evening by those who made them. It is clear that these problems mostly hurt students from poor families and not those of politicians and the rich as they are enrolled in the best private and international schools with many education facilities. This has revealed how capitalist leaders discriminate and segregate poor families!

In conclusion, we state that there is need for the Kenyan society especially Muslims to stand up and oppose these injustices against teachers and any others that emanate from this Capitalist ideology. Either, we state that it is an obligation for Muslims to stand with Hizb ut Tahrir in opposing and criticizing this false Western ideology. Hizb certainly believes that Islam has the best economic system built on the basis of distribution of wealth to all citizens. Islam requires the leader of the Islamic state i.e. the Khaleefah to look after the basic needs of citizens like food, shelter and clothing. Either it requires services like education and health to be catered for by the state for citizens be they rich or poor. It is an obligation for Muslims in Kenya to carry Islam by showing that it is a complete ideology with a lasting solution to all the problems facing humans not only Kenya but the whole world.

Shabani Mwalimu
Media Representative
Hizb ut Tahrir / East Africa