FAITH BASED INSTITUTIONS BRAZENLY PARADING INSTRUMENTS OF BLACKMAIL AGAINST ACADEMICIANS.

It appears that the leadership of the Catholic Church is increasingly rating religious devotion higher than professionalism when contracting lecturers. These academicians have their opinions censored by the leadership of the catholic church and they can even be sacked if their political and religious opinions contradict those of the leadership of the Catholic Church. This is so because recently a lecturer was dismissed from his job at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa for penning articles in a local daily that were inconsistent with the stance of the leadership of the Catholic Church on matters relating to the current draft constitution. His dismissal serves to reinforce the fact that the leadership of the Catholic Church has lost objectivity and has in fact, resorted to brazenly parading its 'instruments of blackmail arranged to intensify pressure on the people who work in all its institutions to accede to its outrageous demands of opposing the draft constitution. This unfortunate stance negates the principal of academic freedom that deems it absolutely necessary that academicians have to investigate their respective fields of knowledge and express their views without fear of restraint or dismissal from office. This is because the open and free inquiry within an academician`s field of study is essential to the pursuit of knowledge and to the performance of his or her proper educational function. This then implies that ones tenure of office is dependent largely on ones competence in his or her field and on his or her acceptance of certain standards of professional integrity rather than on extraneous considerations such as political or religious beliefs or affiliations. Yet this inspiring hatred against academicians is not confined to the Catholic Church. There are many other people who have silently suffered religious discrimination perpetuated by faith based institutions throughout the country. If a lucky Kenyan manages to get a job in such an institution despite his or her beliefs, their problems may not be over. Faith based institutions can decide levels of promotion on the basis of the beliefs of academicians, meaning that there can be a de facto ban on senior posts for those of the "wrong" beliefs even though they wield superb credentials. Perhaps worst of all, employees can be dismissed for conduct which is "incompatible with the precepts, or with the upholding of the tenets" of the employing faith based institutions. It is up to the governing body of that faith based institution to define their "precepts" and what forms of conduct are "incompatible" with it. The mind boggles to imagine what forms of conduct could be considered cause for reprimand or dismissal. It is hard to know the extent to which employees are punished for "incompatible" conduct since academicians are unlikely to want to publicize the fact they have been reprimanded and would even find it hard to take a case to a court of law because currently we have very weak legislation protecting employees against such atrocities. This simply means that employees in faith based institutions can be appointed, disciplined, paid, promoted and dismissed according to their beliefs, with very little or no legal protections at all. The question that must be asked is why the government has failed to justify the religious discrimination visited upon its people? Why is the government not doing anything to tackle this shocking anomaly? Why must faith based institutions preoccupy themselves in shrill opposition to people`s rights and liberties and be allowed to go unpunished? For the sake of the public it is vital that the government listens and does all it can to stop rogue faith based institutions from discriminating their employees on the basis of religion. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA. http://twitter.com/tomefrancis