The Principal Secretary National Treasury Chris Kiptoo when he appeared before the National Assembly Public Accounts committee at the Bunge Tower Nairobi on October 30, 2024.
The government plans to weed out ghost retirees in a fresh head-count of pensioners, an exercise that is part of the budgetary support programme Kenya has with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), aimed at reducing wasteful spending.
Retired public servants —teachers, civil servants and disciplined services personnel— have until February 28 to update their registration details in a new digital pension portal, failure to which they will be locked out of the payroll.
The online pension management information system was unveiled last December to automate pension processes end-to-end and eliminate manual interfaces, which the government fears have been prone to abuse.
Last week, most of the government retirees in different parts of the country, mostly rural areas, were being reminded to update their registration details in the e-pension system which is also supposed to help with timely payment.
The Principal Secretary for National Treasury Chris Kiptoo last year asked all pensioners to complete their registration on the e-registration portal by end of February 28, this year.
“This deadline is not negotiable and it will serve as a vital statement in our effort to modernise and streamline pension administration,” said Mr Kiptoo.
“Kindly note that any pensioner who does not complete their registration by the specified date, will face suspension from the payroll,” added Mr Kiptoo.
Pensioners, some who said they had not received their money for three months, were being asked to update their details at the nearest Huduma Centres.
The government reckons the digitisation exercise will streamline processes, improve accuracy, and facilitate timely pensions payments.
Additionally, the government is taking advantage of the digitisation process to conduct a headcount of its retirees.
Previous headcounts have unearthed ghost pensioners in the government’s payroll, raising questions over the ever-increasing expenditure on pension payment.
Over the years the government’s pension bill has ballooned as employees have attained the retirement age. In the last financial year, the government paid Sh140.6 billion in pension bills, a figure that is expected to increase by more than a third to Sh186.2 billion in the current financial year.
A 2020 census of pensioners revealed that 40,000 retired civil servants remained on the payroll and continued to draw payment despite being dead.
The government is hoping that the census and e-pension system will help reduce inefficiencies associated with the manual payroll which have also led to delays.
Some of the features of the pension management information system include an online submission, a self-service portal, timely payments, real-time monitoring, enhanced security and automated processes.
The system, which has been linked to existing platforms like the Government Human Resources Information System, the Civil Registration Bureau, Kenya Revenue Authority and the Registration of Persons Bureau, will be integrated with the population registry system to ensure data accuracy and consistency.
Appearing before the National Assembly last year, National Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi listed system unavailability as one of the factors that led to the delays in processing of pension to government retirees.
“Technical issues and system downtime have also contributed to delays in pensions processing. Outages and system failures often resulted in significant backlogs,” said Mbadi.
