Metropolitan National Sacco Ltd offices at Chai House along Koinange Street in Nairobi. Teachers complained that TSC was deducting their cash and handing to Metropolitan sacco against their will.
Some 11,310 teachers have stopped remitting savings to the troubled Metropolitan National Sacco Limited amid concern about the financial health of the organisation.
Ms Nancy Macharia, chief executive officer of the Teachers Service Commission(TSC) revealed that only 2,401 teachers were still active members of the sacco as of March 31, 2024, while 11,130 had stopped remitting funds.
“Pursuant to your request for additional information regarding subscriptions of teachers to Metropolitan sacco countrywide, we have prepared and attached herein a list of 11,130 teachers whose remittances to Metropolitan sacco have been stopped as at March 31, 2024,” she said in a letter to Clerk of the Senate Jeremiah Nyegenye.
The disclosure by the TSC follows summons by the Senate’s standing committee on Trade, Industrialisation, and Tourism which had sought information on the status of cash remission by teachers to the organisation following complaints by teachers from Bungoma county that their employer was deducting their cash and handing to the organisation against their will.
This came as some members of the sacco stepped up pressure for the release of its financial results to ascertain its health.
Metropolitan sacco has been dogged by claims of misappropriation that saw at least five top managers resign in November 2022 to pave way for investigations after a government audit revealed massive irregularities.
The exits came days after the board of management of the sacco was sacked and replaced with a caretaker committee following damning findings of a probe ordered by the Commissioner of Co-operatives David Obonyo in April 2022.
An initial investigation of transactions at the sacco unearthed irregularities such as fictitious dividend payments, cooking of financial books, and irregular lending.
Questionable transactions, including Sh49 million in M-Pesa transactions by a single teller at the sacco’s Nakuru branch and an overstatement of the institution’s premier loan facility by an excess of Sh7 billion due to suspected disbursements to non-existent members, are some of the malpractices that were exposed.
The audit further revealed that the management of the sacco, which draws its membership from teachers and civil servants, hoodwinked members with false dividend payments despite non-existent surplus reserves from which such disbursements are made.
The fake dividends were paid out of the members' savings. The management could also not explain why its cumulative assets were stated as Sh28 billion yet the external auditors had established that they were slightly above Sh14 billion.
