Pensions department ordered to pay all claims by stranded retirees
The Commission on Administrative Justice (CAJ) has directed the Director of Pensions Department Alfred Kagika to pay all 144 claims made by stranded retirees within 60 days.
Failure to comply with this directive will result in the Ombudsman issuing the director notice to show cause as to why he should not be declared unfit to hold public office.
Also, the commission wants the pensions department to establish mechanisms to curb cases of corruption and unresponsive conduct of its staff while handling the pensioners who have spent years without receiving a dime of their dues.
These were some of the measures announced by CAJ chairperson Charles Dulo on Thursday at the commission’s offices in Nairobi where some retirees, who have suffered years of back and forth with the pensions department seeking their pensions, were present.
“We have the public interest litigation team which will be swift in swinging to action should the director, pensions department fail to comply within 60 days. We have the powers and adequate resources to ensure the enforceability of the law,” Mr Dulo said shortly after issuing the 60-day ultimatum.
The 144 claims spoken of by the Ombudsman are part of the 318 complaints that have been filed against the Pensions Department by retirees and their families since 2019. Thus far, only 174 have been resolved.
An analysis of the complaints revealed that the majority of the cases-274, relate to delays in processing pensions, including 68 specific cases involving delayed pensions for teachers.
This was evident in the painful narrations of Moses Amoko, 61, a retired teacher whose ventures to secure his wife’s death gratuity as well as his own pension have not yielded fruit in the past 16 and one year respectively.
His wife, the late Joan Achieng was a nurse at the Ministry of Health passed on in 2005 but not a single dime of her gratuity has ever been wired to Mr Amoko who was left with four children to fend for.
“I retired last year and for the past 20 years, my efforts to get my wife’s death gratuity have been in vain. I had to raise my children painfully. Now that I am no longer working, I am yet to receive a single coin of my pension yet I have saved with the government for more than three decades,” he said.
Death gratuity
Just next to Mr Amoko was Mr Mugambi Ngeera whose wife, a teacher, died in 1997 but her family has never accessed her death gratuity either.
“I have been going to the pensions department offices and Treasury for the past 27 years but I have never gotten even a shilling from my wife’s gratuity. Why is the government this brutal to us?” he posed.
For Norah Tendoh, the pursuit for her father’s pension, amounting to Sh1.8million, is yet to bear fruit since his death in 2018.
The anthem of “mkubwa hayuko, rudi baada ya wiki mbili akiwa” (The boss is not in, come after two weeks when he is available) told to her and her kin when seeking assistance from the pension’s department offices, has been the order of the day.
“My mother should have been receiving a monthly payment for five years since my father passed on before being given the lump sum amount but this has never happened yet the five years have elapsed,” she said.
Other than the cases of delayed pensions, the Ombudsman has also recorded 21 cases of unresponsive official conduct, nine cases of inefficiency, four cases of manifest injustice, two cases of unfair treatment, three cases of unlawful conduct, four cases outside the pension’s department mandate and one case related to access to information.
“These numbers reveal a deeply troubling picture of the prolonged delays retirees face resolving their pension complaints. While 90 individuals have waited up to three years, a staggering 160 have endured delays of between four to 15 years,” Commissioner Dulo said.
Still, another lot of 48 retirees have been waiting for between 16 and 25 years, while 20 have been left in limbo for over 26 years- “a period long enough for some to pass away without ever receiving their rightful dues” Commissioner Dulo said.
For CAJ, these numbers are not just simple statistics, but a representation of people grappling with financial hardship, inability to settle medical bills, uncertainty and a profound loss of dignity.
An investigation commissioned by the Ombudsman in 2016 revealed that about 70 per cent of retirees from the public service were unhappy with the services they received in the processing and disbursement of their retirement benefits.
The key reasons for their displeasure with the pensions department included delays in payment of pension, bureaucracy, inefficient and uncooperative officers, corruption and lack of transparency in calculation of benefits.
Whereas the Commission made several recommendations based on its 2016 study— including streamlining of payment processes, decentralisation of the pension disbursement process as well as setting aside adequate funds to pay retirees— pensioners are still reporting difficulty in accessing pension.
Often, the retirees and, or with their family members are forced to make endless trips to pension offices in search of what is rightfully theirs.
The Commission also criticised the pension office staff for insisting that retirees submit additional documents before receiving their money yet the documents are usually submitted to the Department by the pensioners’ employers a year before they retire.
“The pensions department is the custodian of the pensions documentation and should instead retrieve the documents and ensure timely and just resolution of pension claims,” Mr Dulo said.
The Commission now wants the Director of the Pensions Department to address the systemic factors affecting the processing and payment of benefits, streamline administrative procedures on disbursement of retirement benefits.
It also wants the pensions department to prioritise the settlement of all backlog pension cases and develop policy guidelines to streamline the payment of benefits.
The Ombudsman has also called for the establishment and operationalisation of an efficient complaint-handling mechanism to address grievances promptly and ensure accountability in service delivery.
The National Assembly has also been urged to fast-track the finalisation of the Pensions (Amendment) Bill which will establish clear timelines for pensions disbursement by providing for a 60 day window of processing payments.
“The Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury, in collaboration with the Office of the Attorney General and the Law Reform Commission, should review outdated pension laws to align them with current social dynamics and constitutional requirements,” Commissioner Dulo said.
This response by the Ombudsman comes barely a week after the latest data from Treasury showed that the Pension Department processed Sh82.8billion in pension claims in the six-month period to last December- a figure representing a 40 per cent increment from Sh59billion that was paid over the same period a year earlier.