By Augustine Oduor
Nairobi, Kenya: The Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) chief Paul Wasanga has clarified that those who administered last year’s examinations had not been paid due to delays attributed to the unusual examination timetable.
He said the three weeks teachers’ strike pushed the traditional examinations timelines back, prompting Knec to work within limited time.
“Cash is involved and we must be very careful. Traditionally, under the normal examination timetables, we processed the payments simultaneously. This could not happen this time,” he explained.
Further interruptions
Mr Wasanga said Wednesday that in order to release the examinations in time and to stop further interruption of school timetables, processing of payments had to be stopped.
“We had to focus on examinations only first before any payment for the personnel,” he said.
He added, “We will, however, make all the payments within two weeks. We do apologise for the delays.”
Addressing the media, Mr Wasanga said physical verification of the teachers’ documents to ascertain those to be paid also needed more time. “We have over 180,000 people whose details we have to physically verify. Their identification numbers, phone numbers and whether they actually worked and signed,” he said.
Disbursed via telephone
He also said some Sh1.2 billion is the amount to be disbursed via telephone money payment.
Wasanga was reacting to a threat by some two legislators.
These included Ronald Tonui (Bomet Central) and Paul Savimbi Bii (Chepalungu).
The legislators vowed to take the matter to Parliament to compel Knec to release the money to the affected teachers and police officers.
Knec, however, also explained that online registration would in future aid in quick disbursement of the payments.
Teachers have been on record dismissing the online registration.
