Teachers and over 530,010 Kenyan civil servants, including police officers will from January 2021 take their salaries home with less 7.5 salary cut that will be channelled to their pension savings schemes yet to be created.
The Public Service Superannuation Scheme shortly known as PSSS is expected to be biggest pension scheme in Kenya as it is estimated that about 28 billion shillings will be directed to the Scheme from all employed workers under the state agencies and Ministries in government.
All new teachers employees and civil servants below the age of forty-five years will be subjected to PSSS membership. Those who exceed forty-five years will only be able to join the scheme if they opt to but through filling in the PSSS forms.
The 9th September 2012 PSSS Act was assented and was waiting to be effected. Mr Yatani said that the idea is targeting to reducing the pension difficulties by the exchequer as witnessed during this Coronavirus era that has witnessed revenue sources depletion.
For a long time, the government has been blamed for the failure to examine and carrying out mandatory reforms especially regarding this pension scheme that has been pending for 8 years now. But the efforts of this scheme to kick-off has been strongly contested before hence delaying its implementation.
A 2 per cent monthly salary contribution was set to be schemed in the first year of it's kick out, 5 per cent in the second year and 7.5 per cent on the 3rd year and beyond. This has changed as all servants are expected to channel in 7.5 per cent of their payment, starting from Jan next year.
The Treasury Ministry is then expected to match the individual scheme payment which is about 6.9 billion shillings to fifteen per cent of every employee's monthly pay. The annual contribution is equivalent to 55.87 billion shillings.
The government is more determined to keep retired civil servants at comfort as compared to health, water and energy which equals to about KSh111 billion, KSh83.3 billion and KSh72 billion respectively.
In 2017 the civil servants’ basic salary was increased by sixteen and thirty per cent in a timed contributory pension scheme that was meant to coincide with a public servant's per review costing taxpayers 20 billion shillings in. The pay rise was intended to ease the pain of the pension contribution cut.
However, a pension liability of 499 billion shillings was encountered in government-commissioned actuarial research in which the government owed civil servants and in which rose high to 990 billion shillings in the 5 years that followed.
As per the 2009 government-commissioned actuarial study, a 500 billion shillings pension liability m at the time was owed to civil servants who have worked knowing the State would cater to the retirement costs. The liability slightly rose to Sh990 billion in the year 2014.
