The Teachers Service Commission (TSC )is on spot following several overpayment errors identified on the payroll for teachers .
According to an audit report, the commission may have hard times to may not recover some Sh47 million in overpaid salaries .
The Office of the Auditor General of the payroll noted that on the 2021/2022 financial year,a total of 85 teachers have an outstanding overpayment balances accumulating to KSh47,352,946.
The Auditor’s office, now has a serious concern with TSC on how it will recover the balance since it exceeds these teachers retirement age of 60 by the end of their service period.
The Commission chief executive Nancy Macharia on Tuesday had tough moments before the MPs on Public Accounts Committee trying to explain how the overpayment occurred.
The commission was further tasked to explain too on the measures put in place to recover the money so far over paid.
Responding to this , Dr. Macharia said that the commission is guided only to deducting a third of a teacher’s salary in the recovery of the overpayment.
This is according to TSC act Employment Act of 2007 which individuals that for an overpayment recovery a 1/3 of the basic salary of the employee should be deducted per month.
She further added that once a teacher gets overpayments, recovery of any outstanding overpayment is drawn from pensions after retirement.
Macharia further noted that Incase there is a pending balance after the pension is exhausted,balances are recovered from the retired teacher personally or at some point the estate if the teacher is deceased.
The auditor report has further revealed a situation where a TSC official received salary as a teacher and as an official of TSC secretariat.
Equally, the fine details show that 79 employees having similar names with similar bank account numbers earned from different payroll numbers.
These are among the errors to be addressed on the TSC payroll as soon as possible to avoid losing a lot of money.