Colonial laws cited for tutors pension delays

The use of manual system, colonial laws and bureaucracy at the National Treasury has continued to hinder retired teachers from benefitting from their pensions, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has said.

Instead, the teachers’ employer absolved itself from blame over the delay in paying pension, saying that its role is purely facilitative through the preparation of the pension claims and forwarding them to the Director of Pensions for processing and payment.

Although under the TSC operation procedures pensions are supposed to be paid to the teacher within three months after leaving service, the legal provisions do not allow the commission to pay.

This is because TSC only offers a facilitative role in the processing and preparation of documents of the retired teachers for payment by the National Treasury under the Directorate of Pensions.

TSC Human Resource and Management officer Julius Olayo and Legal Affairs Director Cavin Anyuor told the Senate Education Committee chaired by Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu that the current legal provisions under the Pensions Act and the manual system of processing the payment take a long and is laborious.

“There is an old colonial law passed in 1952 that is still being used by the Treasury in paying the pensions,” said Anyuor.

Tooth comb

The TSC official disclosed that the Act provides for a laborious and tedious process, with each document requiring approval or authentication by relevant authorities.

“It is bureaucratic in terms of the checklist in the law. It is an old act. Pension Act checklist is very laborious and requires thorough checks,” said Olayo.

He explained to the committee that the Act provides for the provision and verification of several documents before payment is authorized by the National Treasury.

“The reason for this process is because of the required documents. If the verification is not done with a tooth comb, then it will go to the Treasury and it will be sent back to us which takes time,” he said.

However, Anyuor said the law requires teachers to fill out statutory forms and attach other documents including their Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) cards.

To fast-track the preparation and forwarding of the Pension claims, the commission encourages teachers to submit the required documents to its county and sub-county officers for verification prior to forwarding to its headquarters for submission to the Director of Pensions.

According to Anyuor, this ensures that the correct and complete documents are submitted to the Director of Pensions at the first instance.

“The commission has established an office manned by Officers from the Pensions Department at the Commission’s headquarters to expedite the processing of teacher’s pension claims for onward transmission to the National Treasury,” said Anyuor.

The Legal Director told the Nyutu-led Committee that the commission had also commenced the automation of aspects of the pension process to ensure that the tedious manual process is hastened with a view to improve the turnaround time.

Three months

In addition, Anyuor said that the commission had established a systematic processing of claims through the first-in, first-out principle and placed its employees involved in pension processing on daily targets to ensure that the claims are processed in time and submitted to the Director of Pensions.

TSC was responding to a question by Embu Senator Alex Mudigi who had sought to know the measures the government had put in place to expedite the payment of retirement benefits to the teachers upon their retirement to mirror other institutions.

Currently, the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) processes and remits the benefits within three months of retirement.

However, payment of their pension has been slow with some tutors forced to wait for as long as two years to start getting pensions.

TSC begins processing documents for payments upon the retirement of a teacher.

2,000 teachers

On Tuesday, the committee asked the commission why they have to wait until a teacher retires before they start processing the pensions and why they have not automated their services to hasten the process.

“Is there a plan to automate your services because the current process is manual and it’s hectic? We are in the 21st Century. Why can’t you automate your systems,” posed Kirinyaga Senator James Murango.

“If there is a process, then it should be done nine months to retirement and then what remains is a clearance certificate from TSC and maybe KRA,” said Taita Taveta Senator Johannes Mwaruma.

At least 2,000 teachers retire every month.