A long-standing push by a lobby of senior teachers to be promoted and compensated for decades of alleged unfair treatment has ended in disappointment after the Employment and Labour Relations Court ruled their petition was filed too late to be heard.

The group, Retired & About to Retire Members Welfare, led by Kepha Mwambala, moved to court on March 5, 2025, demanding that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) promote them from Primary Teacher 1 (P1) to Secondary Teacher (S1).

They argued that in 1996, the Commission promoted untrained A-Level certificate holders to S1 but left them out despite having undergone formal training. They sought salary arrears dating from 1996 to 2010, totalling more than Sh3.45 billion, and claimed their rights under the Constitution and the Employment Act had been violated.

However, in a ruling delivered by Principal Judge Byram Ongaya, the Court agreed with the TSC’s preliminary objection and dismissed the case, declaring it time-barred. The judge ruled that although the matter was filed as a constitutional petition, it was in substance a contractual dispute and therefore subject to legal time limits.

“The petitioners’ cause of action accrued sometime in 2010 and for unexplained reasons, they did not move to court until the filing of the instant petition,” said Justice Ongaya.

He cited Section 89 of the Employment Act, which provides a three-year limit for employment claims, and a one-year limit for claims related to continuing injuries. He found that the salary arrears sought were contractual in nature and had been due monthly, yet the teachers took no legal action within the required period.

TSC’s legal representative, Cavin Anyuor, argued that the teachers had disguised the employment dispute as a constitutional case in a bid to sidestep the clear limits set by law. “It is disguised as a Constitutional matter and filed 29 years after the cause of action accrued purposely to evade the rigors of the substantive law,” he submitted.

The judge upheld this position, ruling that the court lacked jurisdiction and that the petitioners had failed to explain the delay. “No legitimate bar to file proceedings within the prescribed time of limitation has been pleaded,” he said.

He further ruled that the petition could not proceed, as it was an attempt to bypass statutory requirements. “Accordingly, the preliminary objection is upheld,” he concluded.

The ruling ends a nearly three-decade campaign by the teachers, some of whom are still serving in the profession while others have since retired. The decision means they have no legal route left to pursue the promotions and arrears they believed were denied unfairly.