Monday, July 4, 2011

Report: 3,400 employees in civil service lack academic qualifications

By BENJAMI MUINDI, bmuindi@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Sunday, July 3 2011 at 21:04

Share This Story
 Share
An estimated 3,400 government employees do not have any academic qualifications.
Related Stories
According to an audit of civil servants, there are only 136 holders of doctoral degrees on the government payroll.
The bulk of the civil servants — 172,914 — are Form Four leavers, while masters and bachelors degree holders are 1,743 and 18,042, respectively.
The numbers show that the government has low levels of education among its staff at a time when the country is aspiring to attain middle-income economy status.
“To achieve the tenets of Vision 2030, deliberate efforts should be made to raise the number of those with tertiary education,” the report says.
“This category of staff (ones with tertiary education) is expected to play a significant role in the achievement of Vision 2030,” it adds.
Workers with tertiary education certificates and above are only 21,264, accounting for 9 per cent of the total workforce.
Nairobi County has the highest number of university graduates in the civil service with 7,423, accounting for 41 per cent.
“The high number of graduates in Nairobi can be attributed to ministry headquarters staff based in the city,” says the report.
Nakuru (718), Kiambu (598), Mombasa (586) and Kisumu (571) are next among counties with high graduate numbers.
Tana River (89), Isiolo (89), Lamu (75) and Samburu (71) have the lowest number of graduate employees.
The audit report also lays bare the huge challenge the government is set to face when it starts sending staff to the 47 counties.
This is because at a time when government duties are set to be decentralised, some counties are thinly staffed while others, like Nairobi, are overstaffed.
While counties such as Kakamega, Nakuru, Kiambu and Meru have well over 5,000 employees each, Homa Bay, Nyamira, Tana River and Tharaka-Nithi have less than 1,000 workers.
The government will have to contend with balancing the numbers while ensuring ethnic integration.
Counties are also not at the same level in terms of development with those in high potential areas far ahead of those in the marginal areas.
High human resource
“To effectively deliver mandates in a centralised government, the marginalised counties will require various resources, including high human resource,” the report says.
Counties hosting provincial headquarters were found to have more staff than others possibly because they host both district and provincial staff.
The staff audit was carried out to accelerate implementation of the Constitution as far as human resource management was concerned.
“This is to build systematic change in critical organisational and staffing structures through series of results producing and momentum building ways.”

No comments:

Post a Comment