The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is yet to pay teachers their May 2023 salaries.
Many teachers had hoped that the Commission would pay them by Friday to allow banks and saccos process the salaries by weekend.
However its sooty in all teachers salary outlets. Still teachers are hopeful that they will get paid by tomorrow Monday.
A TSC insider is now creating panic amongst teachers on status of government to pay its workers.
He says government is struggling to meet its regular obligations which include paying its workers, teachers included.
The insider who also works in TSC Payroll department says teachers should start to find other ways to survive instead of depending on salaries alone which are not very promising especially with the current broke government.
He says a proportional number of teachers may miss pay this month. This he says may include the unpaid junior secondary school teachers.
His sentiments comes barely a month after TSC released a statement on fate of 17,800 junior secondary school (JSS) teachers who missed salaries for three months.
The Commission secretary, Nancy Macharia, had said the delayed payments was attributed to teachers arriving at their work stations later than expected, causing issues with salary processing.
“The procedure is the recruits are given 30 days to report to their various stations, which leads to some commencing work later than others,” said TCS chief executive Nancy Macharia.
She added, “This sometimes causes delays in processing of their salaries. So far, the commission has processed over 50 per cent of salaries of the newly employed teachers.”
Ms Macharia said that the payment delay may also be due to late submission of required documents by the affected employees.
Education Cabinet Secretary Ezekiel Machogu directed TSC to ensure the teachers are paid their salaries expeditiously.
Speaking when he appeared before the National Assembly plenary for grilling by MPs, the CS regretted that more than 50 per cent of the teachers recruited by the TSC were yet to be paid.
Some of the teachers have not received salaries since February when they reported for duty.
“I want to apologize to our teachers for the delay in payment. There are those that we have been unable to pay. As of today when I discussed with the CEO of the Teachers Service Commission, it was confirmed that almost fifty percent of the newly employed teachers have been paid and the other fifty percent, I’m getting information from the feed so we can pay them. I assure you that funds are available and we will be able pay expeditiously,” said Machogu.
The CS was responding to a query by Nominated MP Sabina Chege on the delayed payment of salaries.
He said the delayed salaries was occasioned by different reporting times of the teachers to the schools they were posted.
The junior secondary school teachers reported to their workstations in February and others in March.
Last wee governors across the 47 counties threatened to shut down operations in the next two weeks citing an unprecedented four-month delay in funding from the national government.
Addressing members of the press on Monday 22nd May, Council of Governors chair Anne Waiguru said the National Treasury owes counties 94.35 billion despite several reminders.
According to Waiguru, the national government had failed to disburse a total of Ksh31.45 billion to all 47 counties in February, Ksh29.6 billion in March and 33.3 billion in April, all totalling Ksh94.35 billion.
The Kirinyaga county boss lamented that the four-month funding delay negates the spirit of the governor’s recent meeting with President William Ruto.
“The four-month delay is unprecedented in the history of devolution and negates the spirit of the meeting held in Naivasha between His Excellency The President and the Governors,” Waiguru said after chairing a CoG meeting on Monday.
She gave an ultimatum to Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u to release the cash within the next two weeks or force county bosses to shut down operations.
Patience is expensive n testing.