Retired teachers to get pensions in revised budget

Retired teachers could be paid their pension before July thanks to a Sh8 billion allocation by the Treasury in the revised budget.

The beneficiaries, estimated at 52,000, may however, have to accept the benefits in phases since the allocation is only a portion of the Sh42 billion awarded by a Nakuru court last December.

The allocation makes the retirees among the biggest winners in the supplementary budget that has seen major development programmes shelved.

"There were carryovers to this year such as the statutory deductions and the teachers' pensions," Henry Rotich, Treasury Cabinet secretary told Parliamentarians Monday.

It would be the closest the retired teachers have gotten to their dues in a struggle that started in 1997.

The first phase of the payout will be made before June 30 when the financial year closes. The supplementary budget covers the remaining 100 days of the 2015-16 accounting period.

Arising from the budget review, the total allocation for the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) rose to Sh188 billion.

The budget office noted that teacher recruitment in primary and secondary schools was lagging behind by nearly 13,000.

TSC had planned to hire 10,000 secondary school teachers and 9,159 for the primary level in its initial budget. However, only 3,662 and 2,338 have been recruited.

Mr Rotich told members of the Liaison Committee that Sh2.7 billion would be spent on the war against graft in the next three months.

The money will be spent by five agencies including the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Sh523 million has been given to the DPP, as part of boosting the agency's activities around investigation and prosecution of corruption and economic crimes.

The Judiciary's budget has been trimmed by more than Sh2 billion, which is expected to result in fewer magistrate and High Court stations.

On the multi-trillion-shilling Lapsset project, the CS said he had allocated an additional Sh1 billion to avert any interruption of works.

He was responding to concerns raised by Aden Keynan, the chairman of the Public Investments Committee, who had sought to know whether the State still thought Lapsset was viable.

"Ethiopia has already shifted its preference to Djibouti. Recently, we have seen tripartite agreements being rubbished by neighbouring countries. Are we focused on these major projects?" Mr Keynan asked. He was referring to a recent decision by Uganda to trash an agreement it had entered with Kenya to jointly fund and develop the crude oil pipeline.

"I have a lot of question marks on Lapsset and other key projects that we have worked on for the last five years," added Mr Keynan.

Rotich added that he had set aside Sh800 million to fund the upcoming Tokyo International Conference on African Development.

The NYS and youth empowerment programme budget was slashed by Sh7.5 billion.