Relief As Retired Teachers Receive Their Pension At last

After more than two decades of clamor, the government has finally paid retired teachers Sh16.08 billion in overdue pensions.

Njuguna Ndung’u, the secretary of the National Treasury Cabinet, stated that the sum relates to amended claims from 22,022 teachers who retired between 1998 and 2003.

He stated that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), on behalf of the retirees who were initially granted enhanced pension emoluments by the High Court in Nakuru on October 28, 2008, has submitted 23,487 updated claims to the ministry. On November 12, 2010, the government appealed to the Court of Appeal but was unsuccessful. In 2013, it appealed to the Supreme Court but lost once more.

The Attorney General submitted a second application to the Supreme Court in 2014 asking for a reconsideration of the Court of Appeal ruling. The Supreme Court rejected the application in a decision on December 9, 2015, leaving the government with little choice but to make the payment. The remaining 1,465 claims are being reviewed by the Treasury, according to Prof. Ndung’u, and will soon be paid.

The impacted retirees were teachers who, as a result of the 1997 agreement’s lack of expanded pay benefits and the government’s subsequent cash crunch, retired after only enjoying the benefits of one of the five phases.

After that, one of the former teachers, Mr. Philip Too, filed a petition with the Senate stating that the TSC had not yet paid the retirees, nearly 20 years after their retirement, for the unpaid claims for instructors who had retired between 1997 and 2007.

TSC said two weeks ago that Treasury was to fault for the payments’ delays and that they had processed the required paperwork for the retired teachers.

Nancy Macharia, the head of TSC at the time, testified before the Senate Education Committee that the organization had finished and sent the documentation to Treasury to carry out payments.

Payment pact

Through Legal Notice 534 of 1997, Knut and the government had reached a salary deal. The wage award was to be paid out over the course of five years in five phases, with the final phase due in 2001.

In 1997, the government only put the first phase into effect. Teachers and the government reached a new agreement in 2003 that called for the government to pay the arrears over a 10-year period beginning in 2003. However, later that year, the two parties reached an agreement to cut the 10 phases down to 6, then 5, to be implemented over the course of six years. The legal conflict continued until the administration had exhausted all available legal options.

Prof. Ndung’u stressed, however, that the teachers eligible for benefits under the court judgment are those who left the classroom before receiving their corresponding pay awards in accordance with the phases specified in the agreement.

Any teacher who retired after July 2003, according to him, earned their relevant phases and received their pension benefits as intended.

Akelo Misori, the secretary-general of the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet), has urged MPs to press Treasury to expedite the payments.

Collins Oyuu, the secretary-general of Knut, bemoaned the fact that despite the National Assembly’s approval of the Treasury’s distribution of funds to remedy the teachers’ condition, pensioners continue to suffer from the humiliation of being perennial paupers.

He said that the government set aside Sh3.3 billion for the benefit of the impacted teachers in the budget for the fiscal year that ended in June 2012.

Relief As Retired Teachers Receive Their Pension At last