Director of Pensions Shem Nyakutu was on Tuesday jailed for 30 days by the Nakuru High Court for contempt.
Judge Janet Mulwa said the official deliberately failed to disburse Sh1.5 billion meant for retired teachers despite the cash being provided by the National Treasury.
The sentence follows a suit by over 52 000 teachers who retired between August 1997 and September 1998.
The retirees want Nyakutu and Teachers Service Commission CEO Nancy Macharia jailed for six months jail term for failing to remit the money to their accounts.
However, in her ruling, Mulwa acknowledged that the TSC boss and the Controller of Budget had already complied with the court order.
"The Director of Pension has refused to provide the court with the names of the claimants who have been paid. Both TSC and the Controller of Budget have forwarded over 2,000 files for payment but none has been acted on," the ruling reads in part.
Mulwa also found Nyakutu guilty of chasing away TSC staff who had delivered the files to his office on February 9.
"Nyakutu has also confirmed sending away the TSC staff who were complying with the court order. This shows that he is in total contempt. He is therefore imprisoned for 30 days if he fails to pay all the claimants before March 14," Mulwa said.
Nyakutu defended himself saying: "I sent away the TSC officials since we did not have space to store more files,"
"We were working on other 6,000 files and I asked them to give us more time to finish those that they had already brought to us," Nyakutu told the court.
He added that he had already complied with the court orders to remit the money to the claimants and asked for more time to conclude the process.
"If this court grants me two weeks, I will conclude the payment. We have already disbursed Sh255 million to 1,822 claimants. I request for more time," Nyakutu added.
He had been ordered to pay the money before February 28, 2017, and furnish all the parties with the list of beneficiaries.
However, Mulwa said that Nyakutu would have told the court if indeed he experienced difficulties; which was not the case.
Nyakutu also failed to explain where the rest of the money is bearing in mind that he has only disbursed Sh255 million out of the Sh1.5 billion. The teachers want Sh42 billion.
Through their lawyer Dominic Kimatta, they applied to have the Finance CS Henry Rotich and his PS Kamau Thugge appear in court on April 12 to explain the efforts they have made since the matter came to court in 2002.
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