TSC faults missing records for teachers’ pension delays

The Teachers Service Commission has attributed the mounting delays in the payment of teachers’ pensions to missing and incomplete records.

This comes even as it emerged that 3,224 teachers are yet to receive their pension for the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 financial years.

Documents tabled in Parliament show a total of 16,088 teachers exited the service through natural attrition during the period, and only 12,862 cases are being processed.

“Out of these (16,088), the commission has processed 12,864 cases out of which 10,388 have been submitted to National Treasury for payment while 2,476 cases are still awaiting verification prior to submission to the Treasury, ” TSC acting CEO Eveleen Mitei told MPs on Tuesday

She was appearing before the National Assembly’s Committee on Implementation to respond to how it has implemented the house resolution regarding the pension process.

She also informed the committee chaired by Budalangi MP Raphael Wanjala that only 227 cases were pending between 2019 and 2024.

From the commission’s data, 11 cases of pension were pending in 2019, 2020 (19), 2021 (18), 2022 (34), 2023 (35), and 2024 had 110 cases.

Mitei said gaps in documentation, especially details of beneficiaries in cases of death of the pensioners, have slowed the processing, leaving thousands of former teachers and their next of kin in prolonged uncertainty.

She said the commission is working with relevant government agencies to reconstruct missing data and streamline the verification process to clear the backlog.

“This is largely attributed to either the retirees or the beneficiaries having not submitted the requisite statutory supporting documents to enable the commission to finalise the cases,” Mitei said.

“Efforts to trace the said beneficiaries through their area chiefs have not yielded fruit.”

TSC officials told lawmakers that the problem has been compounded by historical record-keeping challenges, with some files either lost or lacking critical details required to verify claims.

The revelation comes amid growing concern over the welfare of retired teachers, many of whom rely solely on their pensions for survival.

Some have reportedly waited months, and in certain cases years, to access their benefits.

However, MPs raised concerns over the delays, questioning why the commission has not digitised records to prevent such bottlenecks and ensure the timely payment of retirees.

Igembe North MP Julias Taitum said it is regrettable that teachers are dying without accessing their pensions.

“Teachers are dying without being paid because of bureaucracies,” Taitum said.

The commission assured MPs that efforts are underway to address the issue, including strengthening record management systems and expediting the processing of pending claims.

The commission has decentralised the pension process to sub-counties to ease the exchange of correspondence with the retired teachers.

TSC has also embarked on issuing early retirement notices to teachers, at least one year before the date of retirement, to give tutors an opportunity to collate and submit all the necessary documents prior to the date of exit.

“The submission of the pension claim documents has been largely manual. To mitigate this, the commission developed and implemented the Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) Pension Module that hastens the processing of the pension claim documents,” Mitei said.

INSTANT ANALYSIS

To address the pension process and reduce the delays, the Teachers Service Commission has automated its pension process to make the process more efficient.