National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday demanded a proper relook at the systems used for payment by the teachers employer.
The directive followed revelations of flaws in the payment systems that have led to questionable payments.
The irregularities included payments after death of employee, erroneous salary and allowances overpayments, undue salary and cases of misdirected salaries.
In one instance, the commission misdirected a four-month salary of a teacher amounting to Sh151,741 to Fosa-Kwetu Sacco in Machakos.
In another case, the commission had to write to a widow to refund a five-month salary and allowances totalling to Sh260,110 that was erroneously paid after the death of husband.
The commission erroneously made payments of Sh625,309 in the 2021-22 financial year alone.
Soy MP David Kiplagat demanded the audit following the revelations that TSC admitted in the documents tabled before the oversight team.
“We are questioning the kind of the payment system. Do we say there are holes in the systems? Is there something that is fundamentally wrong in the TSC payment system that needs to be addressed?” posed Kiplagat.
Funyula MP Wilberforce Oundo supported the forensic audit to get to the bottom of the mismatching figures.
“Probably it might need an in-depth review, is it possible we could have and a bit of in-depth review of the payroll. It seems there seems to be a lot of challenges,” he said.
Ruling on the issues, PAC chairman John Mbadi directed a forensic audit on the payroll system to establish the confusion in the commission’s system.
“Nothing stops us from demanding for a review. We want a forensic audit of the system to understand it and make improvement,” Mbadi ordered.
The MPs spoke when they met TSC chief executive officer Nancy Macharia, who appeared before them to respond to audit queries for 2021-22 financial year.
The TSC boss was also put to task after it emerged that 85 teachers had outstanding overpayment balance of Sh47 million.
“Review of the detailed analysis of the payroll for the period under the review revealed there were 85 teachers with outstanding overpayment balance amounting to Sh47,352,946,” the auditor pointed in her 2021-22 report.
“Further, the outstanding payment period of these officers will exceed their retirement age of 60 or the end of the contract period.”
In another audit finding, 21 teachers and 75 secretariat staff were paid leave allowance twice amounting to Sh240,000 and Sh740,000, respectively.
“In addition, 1,807 teachers and 135 secretariat staff were paid salary arrears more than once during the year amounting to Sh197,214,537 and Sh15,509,930 respectively, contrary to Article 201 (d) of the Constitution, which states that public money shall be used in a prudent and responsible way. ”
Macharia explained that the commission pays allowances to teachers every January and those staff who join after January or reinstated back on payroll after January are given one-off payment the following year.
“The cases referred to were for teachers/ secretariat staff who were employed and onboarded or were reinstated back on payroll between February 2021 and December 2021 when the leave allowance for 2021 had already been paid,” she said.
“Considering that these teachers were due for leave allowance for 2021, they were paid the allowance in the months between July 2021 and June 2022 and also paid leave allowance for 2022 in January 2022. The payments were not double or overpayment.”
