TSC Exposed For Overpaying Some Staff Amid Teachers’ Shortage.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has been exposed for overpaying a section of its staff at a time when the agency is facing a teacher shortage.
According to the most recent public audit, which covers the period from June 2021 to June 2022, the irregular payments may have drained some Ksh.3 billion and provided teachers with irreversible salary advances.
The audit also reveals that the commission failed to remit over Ksh.2 billion in employee taxes.
In the audit, Auditor General Nancy Gathungu stated that some of the lost funds were historical, with the possibility that ghost teachers were paid between 1988 and 2000, when teachers were still paid in cash rather than through banks.
TSC is said to have advanced Ksh.10.5 million in salary advances, some of which were not documented and the remainder were never recovered.
“Further, an amount of Ksh.4,264,665 in respect to one hundred and forty-five (145) staff had no movement over the last twelve months. Management did not give any reason for non-recovery of the salary advances” Ms Gathungu wrote.
Ironically, some TSC employees whose salary advances were not repaid continued to receive them, raising the possibility of a collusion to misappropriate commission funds.
TSC also couldn’t explain how it overpaid employees to the tune of Ksh.352 million, some of which it hadn’t recovered in years.
Some teachers were overpaid by Ksh.33 million under mysterious circumstances, funds that the Auditor General claims will never be recovered.
“Review of the detailed analysis of the payroll provided for the financial year 2020/2021 revealed that thirty-two teachers had an outstanding ‘salary overpayment’ balance amounting to Sh33,780,614,” Gathungu wrote.
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“However, the repayment period for recovery of the outstanding amounts is beyond the retirement age of the respective teachers. The recoverability of the balance is therefore doubtful.”
One teacher had been overpaid by Ksh.4.8 million, which was being recovered at a cost of Ksh9,056. If the teacher had completed probation before such an advance was issued, it would take 44 years to recover, an almost impossible period to be in service.
While most government institutions require KRA tax compliance before hiring, over 5000 TSC employees are not compliant because their taxes totaling Ksh.2.2 billion were never remitted to KRA.
TSC was given Ksh.2.5 billion to try to close its teaching staff gap, which has widened to over 100,000 and is expected to grow as the government continues to implement the Competency Based Curriculum, or CBC.
TSC Exposed For Overpaying Some Staff Amid Teachers’ Shortage