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Macharia said by the 22nd of every month, teachers usually have their salaries in their accounts.
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She said sometimes a teacher dies on the 30th or is dismissed or resigns among other scenarios the commission has no control over.
Image: FILE
The Teachers Service Commission has explained how it ended up paying dead teachers in a 2021/22 audit report that caused MPs to order a forensic audit of its payroll
TSC CEO Nancy Macharia said the problem is created when the commission gets a report of a teacher's exit from the service after salaries have been disbursed.
Macharia said the commission runs its payroll, the largest in the country, on the 20th of every month.
She said by the 22nd of every month, teachers usually have their salaries in their accounts.
Macharia said sometimes a teacher dies on the 30th or is dismissed or resigns among other scenarios the commission has no control over.
“You see, we have already disbursed the payroll by the 30th. So what happens then? We have to deduct overpayment because this teacher worked half the month," she said.
Macharia spoke over the weekend during a sensitisation forum with the media in Nairobi.
She said teachers at times die and the families and school heads deal with the burial first instead of rushing to inform the commission.
“That is the problem but at the end of the day, we have recovered this money. We continue to recover this money,” she said.
“Unless we say we will be paying teachers on the 30th, then we won't have any overpayment. But we want to ensure our teachers are paid on time to keep them motivated."
Due to the introduction of digitisation in the commission, Macharia said TSC can now see in real-time when a teacher enters and exits the service.
“We are hoping that going forward with the digital system we won't have these gaps. Of course, you have to understand before the digitisation we were relying on a manual system which would take too long to get to us,” Macharia said.
Further, Macharia said the issue had already been resolved by the Auditor General, only that it had to go to parliament because MPs had already picked it.
She said the commission even presented evidence to the auditor General showing that the monies were recovered and continue to be recovered.
MPs on Tuesday last week ordered a forensic audit of the commission systems after detecting flaws in the state agency’s payroll.
National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee demanded a proper relook at the systems used for payment by the teacher's employer.
The directive followed revelations of flaws in the payment systems that led to questionable payments.
The irregularities included payments after death of an employee, erroneous salary and allowances overpayments, undue salary and cases of misdirected salaries.