The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) under the leadership of the fearless but tactful trade union maestro, the late Ambrose Adeya Adongo alias A.A.A, managed to secure a salary deal of 150% to her members during the tough regime of the late president Daniel Moi.
The pay deal which was to cost Kenya a whopping Ksh 123 billion met headwinds only after the first phase of implementation.
The Government claimed the economy would have collapsed would it have implemented the remaining Ksh80 billion in four phases. And so the implementation schedule was halted and further negotiations were to take place to allow progress. After several consultative meetings between teachers’ trade unions, the Teachers’ Service Commission, Treasury and the then Kibaki regime, it was agreed that the money be paid in four phases beginning 2003.
Along the implementation process, quite a number of teachers retired before fully benefitting from the deal. This led them to filing a court case at the High Court in Nakuru so as to be assisted to have them access their payments since the law provides that once a pay agreement is entered between employers and employees; all employees on payroll stand to benefit entirely even if they exit the service within a month’s time.
There existed several bottlenecks in identifying who were to be the rightful beneficiaries of the pay deal. For several years; the Courts were treated to varied numbers of the would-be beneficiaries with other sources giving numbers ranging from 52,000 to 32,000 and later 31,000. All these numbers came out not to be true until the commission did an intensive audit that revealed that the true number of the affected teachers was 23,811.
This meant that the affected 23,811 teachers who were in service when the government agreed to pay salary increase beginning 1997 would benefit from this deal.
It must be noted that the time difference from five years to ten years of implementation was occasioned by two payment plans that got into each other. One was that it had been agreed that the deal be addressed in two phases from 1997 to 1999. Then two, that there were three years of disagreement (2000 – 2002) in which after discussions, the implementation schedule resumed in 2003 and was cleared in 2006.
Teachers who retired in between the years and were to benefit from the pay deal instituted a court case where the High Court under the then Justice David Maraga on October 23, 2008 ordered TSC to process pension based on the salary award in the 1997 agreement.
Also to note is that payment of pension to retired teachers is only paid by the Director of Pensions; the Teachers Service Commission is only charged with responsibilities of preparing the claims and handing them to the pensioner. This poses a challenge of one not being in a position of holding either the TSC or the Pensions Department responsible of not executing payments on time.
The TSC and the Attorney General tried to lodge an appeal against the Judgment at the Supreme Court hoping that its reason would prevail. But still, five Supreme Court judges, in a 45-page judgment, disallowed the notice of motion by TSC in December 2015.
The bench was led by now retired Deputy Chief Justice Kalpana Rawal, the higher courts re-affirmed the Maraga Judgment dismissing the Appeal. TSC was also ordered to pay costs of the suit in the High Court and the Court of Appeal amounting to 43 billion shillings. The Kenya National Union of Teachers welcomed the development but demanded that all families be paid including those who have since died since data within the commission has the next of kin for all her employees.
Due to delays of payment to these teachers, they moved to the High Court seeking orders to hold in contempt the former Commission Secretary Gabriel Lengoiboni; in one way or the other, no action was taken and seemingly the matter is still dragging and hasn’t been logically concluded. The TSC was and continues to be in contempt of a living court order.
We see many teachers streaming our corridors seeking to be assisted to access their payments; we have been able to assist quite a number and feel there are several out there who may not be in a position to access our offices.
Owing to the manner and way in which this matter was handled and the way the pensions department handles retirees pension; We are of an opinion that legislation be made to have pension of workers be processed and paid directly by employer and not the pensions department since this is coming out to be a disaster. We feel it would be better to handle one agency on a single matter such as pension with each individual employer other that jumbling all employees from all state institutions to one source.
During campaigns; Kenya Kwanza promised that they would honor court orders and have pending matters implemented as per the judgments; they demonstrated their willingness to honor court orders by swearing in the six judges whom the court had ordered sworn but had not by the previous regime. We are reminding the Kenya Kwanza Government that 23,811 retired teachers of the 1997 salary award are yet to be paid their due pension.
By Collins Oyuu
Oyuu is the Secretary General, Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT)
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