Members of Parliament (MPs), on Tuesday, April 26, wrote to Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung'u, asking him to create a new pension model for retirees.
Chairman of the Finance and National Planning Committee at the National Assembly, Kimani Kuria, stated that Professor Njuguna had been tasked with integrating civil servants' payment system with pension payroll.
Retirees were said to be suffering due to the long processes of applying for and receiving their funds.
"On the issue of pension, we have tasked the Treasury to integrate the civil servants' payment system to the pension scheme so that a month after retirement you are on the pension payroll," Kuria stated.
According to Kuria, retiring public servants will receive their pension within 30 days after exiting from service if a plan for the new model is put into action by the Treasury.
The new integrated system will ensure that the Pensions Department in the Treasury and Planning Ministry will hasten the processing of pensions without delays due to manual filings.
Kuria acknowledged that the department had deployed officers at the Teachers Service Commission and Vigilance House to help facilitate the processing for retiring teachers and police officers, noting that the manual process was tedious and expensive.
"Today, if a teacher retires and desires to buy a retirement home, a car, or anything they dreamed of, they have to wait 3 to 4 years to get their pension despite some having served for up to 30 years.
"They are asked for their first letter of employment, first payslip and many more. We aim at saving them the time and agony of getting the requisite documents that are asked for," Kuria stated.
The deployment of Treasury officials at various departments was meant to eliminate cartels that had been swindling retiring officers of their hard-earned pension money on the guise that they were in a position to help retired public servants to earn their pension faster.
On February 9, 2023, Principal Pensions Officers Douglas Asanyo and Anna Kitole revealed that retiring public servants were duped by fraudsters in various government departments due to ignorance and not necessarily corrupt officials within the Ministry.
“We have a service charter that says that upon a member’s exit, their benefits are paid within 90 days and we are looking forward to a time when, soon, very soon; with now the introduction of a new system within the pension sector, that a member will exit the civil service from a salary to a payment of pension the next month without any break in the earnings,” Asanyo stated.
Kitole also confirmed that reforms were in place to ensure that pensions are paid quickly through an automated system that eliminates fraud.
“The department has deployed officers at the Teachers Service Commission and Vigilance House to help prepare the pensions of retiring teachers and police officers and we hope that this will be replicated in all ministries at headquarters,” Kitole stated.
