On Wednesday, November 21, 2018, the Nakuru High Court pushed back a long-running pension dispute involving 52,000 retired teachers seeking Sh43 billion in salaries and pension arrears. Justice Janet Mulwa set the matter for January 17, 2019 after it came up for mention.
The retirees say they have spent more than 18 years pursuing payment and blame the pensions office for the delay. Through their lawyer Dominic Kimata, they accuse Director of Pensions Shem Nyakutu of frustrating settlement of the claims by ignoring court orders.
The teachers have already filed an application asking the court to punish Mr Nyakutu for contempt. The court had earlier ordered him, on August 1, to submit a detailed report on the status of the payments, disclose how much money his office had received from the government for the claims, and file vouchers for every retiree said to have been paid.
Nearly four months later, the information was still not before the court, after the hearing was adjourned four times for different reasons.
The dispute dates back to 2005, when the retirees won a petition declaring that they were entitled to retirement benefits under a 1997 agreement they had signed with the Teachers Service Commission. Then High Court judge David Maraga, on October 23, 2008, ordered the TSC to process pensions based on the salary award in that agreement.
Appeals by the commission and the Attorney-General failed, with the Supreme Court in 2008 upholding the ruling. Even so, the teachers returned to court saying the TSC had still not paid them.
The TSC has denied responsibility for the delay, saying it processed the claims and forwarded them to the pensions office for payment. The National Assembly had also set aside Sh1.6 million in the 2016/17 supplementary budget for the resettlement of the retired teachers’ dues.
Despite that allocation, the court was told that only 1,623 former teachers had been paid.
