The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is on the spot for overpaying a section of its employees as the agency is staggering from a shortage of teachers.
The latest public audit covering the period to June 2021, revealed some irregular payments suspected to have drained Ksh.3 billion and issuance of irredeemable salary advances to teachers.
The audit further reports that TSC failed to remit over Ksh.2 billion in taxes deducted from its staff.
According to the auditor General Nancy Gathungu, some of the lost funds are from the past with the likelihood that between the years 1988 and 2000 ghost teachers were paid during the time when teachers still received their payments in cash and not through the banks.
Moreover, TSC is said to have advanced un-documented Ksh.10.5 million in salary advances, some of which were not being recovered at all.
“Further, an amount of Ksh. 4,264,665 in respect to one hundred and forty-five 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, the TSC staff whose salary advances were not being repaid kept on receiving more salary advances. Thus, raising the question of a probable conspiracy of misappropriation of funds allocated to the commission.
Besides, the commission was unable to explain how it overpaid staff a total of Ksh.352 million some of which it had failed to recover in years.
“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,” “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.” Gathungu wrote.
In addition, unlike other government institutions that ask for KRA tax compliance to offer employment, TSC has over 5000 staff who are not compliant. This is because their taxes totaling to Ksh.2.2 billion were never remitted to KRA.
TSC was allotted Ksh.2.5 billion to narrow its teaching staff gap that has widened beyond 100,000 and is likely to grow as the government continues rolling out the Competency Based Curriculum, CBC.