Retirement or Waiting Room for Death: Pension Access in Kenya

 

You walk into the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) offices to follow up on a pension matter, entering what feels like an administrative underworld where years of service fade into paperwork limbo. The Commission operates under the TSC Act 2015, and there are references to a 2024 amendment — but what is painfully clear to anyone who has walked these corridors is this: we lost Mzee before he ever received his pension. And he is not an exception. He is the pattern.

Across Kenya, teachers who have spent decades shaping young minds die waiting for what was legally due to them. Some spend ten to fifteen years chasing their pension, enduring disappearing files, stalled processes, and endless administrative circles. Time passes. People age. Some simply do not make it. What should be a dignified transition into post‑service life becomes a waiting room for death.

This is not mere inefficiency. It is cruelty clothed in bureaucracy.

For the small minority who receive their pensions within five years, there is an unspoken truth that everyone pretends not to acknowledge: bribes lubricate the process. Anecdotes abound of retirees being told to “facilitate” their own files, paying intermediaries, or greasing palms just to see their entitlement processed. It is a transactional corruption that transforms service — the act of educating a nation — into a negotiation with gatekeepers.

But the problem is deeper than anecdote. The pension system itself is riddled with systemic fraud and mismanagement. According to the Auditor‑General’s 2024 report, Kenya’s public pension scheme lost KSh 67 billion through fake payments to non‑existent beneficiaries and duplicate claims — a scandal that spans multiple ministries, including teachers, judiciary, and social protection. Auditors identified 260,242 fake claimants and billions disbursed without proper verification, including payouts to people who had not retired or were never registered properly in the first place. This is not isolated corruption — this is institutional collapse. The same audit found irregular payments made even before beneficiaries retired, duplicate bank accounts used for multiple disbursements, and billions paid to individuals without valid tax identification. In one instance, 419 individuals were irregularly enrolled and paid KSh 555.9 million, while another 962 received KSh 1.6 billion improperly before their official exit from service. Citizen Digital

These irregularities are replicated across Kenya’s broader pension ecosystem. In parliament, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi admitted there are “ghost pensioners” on the payroll — people who continue to receive benefits long after death, without real verification or accountability. 

This explains why many teachers suspect their pensions are not just delayed, but diverted, misused, or paid to fictitious claimants. While the TSC has dismissed specific claims of fake deaths and stolen pensions as unfounded in some cases, the very fact that such allegations arise reflects widespread distrust in the system. 

The corruption and mismanagement extend beyond delays. The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) — the largest pension fund in the country — has its own litany of scandals. Massive investment blunders, such as purchasing expensive and unnecessary equipment, holding idle non‑income‑generating properties, and failing to recover nearly KSh 940 million in tax refunds, erode the fund’s ability to deliver returns to pensioners. There are also legal battles that further jeopardize pension security. NSSF lost an arbitration case forcing it to pay KSh 800 million to a contractor, adding to the pension fund’s financial stress and exposing weak oversight mechanisms. 

The problem is not just that funds are mismanaged — employer and employee contributions are not even fully remitted. A recent audit found that the government itself failed to remit KSh 1.2 billion in pension deductions to the Civil Servants’ Pension Scheme, reducing the returns workers should rightfully enjoy. 

Across the system, weak record‑keeping means funds sit unclaimed. The NSSF alone holds KSh 158 million for 18,671 untraced members simply because internal mechanisms fail to locate them — even as retirees wait for payments they earned. 

This pattern reveals something far more damning than administrative incompetence. It reveals a system that quietly siphons public pension resources — sometimes through outright fraud, sometimes through mismanagement, and often through policies that lack transparency and accountability.

For teachers and civil servants, the system that was meant to guarantee dignity in old age instead becomes a test of endurance through delay, confusion, and negotiation. Those without connections or the ability to “facilitate” their claims languish. Some are still chasing their pensions a decade later. Others die before receiving a shilling. This is not just a failure of policy — it is a breach of the social contract between the state and those who served it.

Imagine dedicating a lifetime to the classroom, shaping the minds of future generations, only to be treated as an inconvenience once your service ends. This is not fiction; it is the lived reality of countless Kenyans. The system quietly converts retirement into a grind of endless forms, missing files, blame games between ministries, and shrinking hope.

Reform is urgently needed. Digitization of pension records, biometric verification, and enhanced auditing protocols are steps the government claims to be pursuing to crack down on fraud and improve accuracy. But technological solutions alone cannot fix a system riddled with political patronage, weak enforcement, and institutional opacity. Real reform would mean criminal accountability for mismanagement, transparent tracking of pension claims, mandatory timelines for disbursement, and public audits made accessible to citizens.

Kenya’s teachers, among other professionals deserve better than waiting rooms of bureaucracy. They deserve dignity, security, and the pension they earned through decades of service. They should not have to die before seeing a system that honors their contribution. Until that happens, the country must confront a stark truth: our pension schemes do not just fail financially — they fail morally.