Recall pension officers, report proposes

Officers handling pension matters for retiring teachers will be recalled from the Teachers Service Commission if new proposals are adopted. The four pension officers, seconded to the TSC by the Pensions Department, should be made to conduct their duties from the Treasury where the department is located, says a Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission report.

According to the report, the move would allow the officers to conduct their duties of receiving and checking TSC documents with impartiality and under closer supervision. The report says numerous pension claims were being returned to the TSC due to errors and lack of requisite documents despite the presence of the four officers to help streamline operations.

Although it is standard practice that the four officers from the Pensions Department should be the final authority to verify and stamp claims at the TSC, they do so and then submit them back to TSC for signature by the authorised officer(s). “Pension officers attached to the TSC verify and stamp claims and then submit them back to TSC for signature by the authorising officer of TSC.

“This practice creates an opportunity for alterations of the claim after verification,” notes the report of the probe into the systems, policies, procedures and practices of the Pensions Department. The report said TSC pensioners risked losing their hard-earned retirement benefits to crafty officers at the commission headquarters due to the ease with which claim documents can be forged.

Several TSC officers sign the forwarding letters for submitting pension claims to the Pensions Department, thus opening avenues for forgery of documents, the report notes.

Signatures

To safeguard retirees, the report asks the director of pensions to act only on claims that are authorised by officers whose signatures have been forwarded to the department by the TSC secretary. Arrangements in handling pension matters from TSC, where claims are received at the department without the retirees’ personal files, create an opportunity for processing fake claims and conferring wrong awards.

To seal this glaring loophole, the report calls for reforms in processing pension claims to include personal files for authentication of required documents. It also proposes verification of a teacher’s progress in service, such as promotion, and ascertaining that the retiree was, indeed, an employee of the commission.