Retired teachers have a reason to smile after the government announced it has remitted Ksh16.08 billion meant to pay their pension after over two decades.
The National Treasury Cabinet Secretary (CS) Njuguna Ndung’u said the amount is for revised claims from 22,022 teachers who retired between 1998 and 2003.
The affected retirees were teachers who did not benefit from enhanced pay following the 1997 deal, but retired after only benefiting from one of the five phases due to cash crises that hit the government at the time.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) had entered into a pay agreement with the government in 1997 through Legal Notice 534 of 1997. The salary award was to be paid in five phases over a period of five years with the last phase slated for 2001.
The government only implemented the first phase in 1997. In 2003, the teachers and the government renegotiated and signed a new deal to have the government pay the arrears over 10 years starting in 2003. But later that year, two parties agreed to reduce the 10 phases to six, then later to five in a 2007 agreement, implemented within a period of six years. A court battle ensued dragging on until the government exhausted all judicial avenues.
Ndung’u said the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) had sent 23,487 revised claims for the retirees, who were first awarded enhanced pension emoluments by the High Court in Nakuru on October 28, 2008.
The government once went to the Court of Appeal but lost the appeal on November 12, 2010 and again lost in 2013 at the Supreme Court.
By Vostine Ratemo
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