Thursday, February 7, 2013

More salary surprises for all public servants


By PAUL WAFULA and MOSES MICHIRA
Nairobi, Kenya: Kenyans will for the first time today have a one-week opportunity to say how much they want their President, Cabinet members, elected representatives, and other top officials to earn.
The opportunity provided by the Constitution promulgated in 2010 will see proposed salary cuts drawn by the Salary Remuneration Commission (SRC) for the first time and given the force of Law without approval by either the presidency, Cabinet, or even Parliament as has been the case in the past. 
But before the new pay structure expected to be in force in April is gazetted, the commission will have to factor in the presentations by members of the public at today’s forum in Nairobi’s Kenyatta International Conference Centre. Also enquiries with SRC revealed that the officers such as the President (if he will still be in office) and heads of constitutional commissions, whose pay has been reduced would see the slashed figure missing from their April pay-slips.
But what would interest Kenyans is that SRC will in March move over to the second phase, which entails review of salaries for public servants in the lower categories without exception. Again it is expected that there will be salary cuts as well as review of structures and departmental set ups, to curb wastages and extravagances, which SRC has blamed on what it calls Kenya’s ‘monstrous’ public wage bill.
The groups in the second category include teachers, doctors, university lecturers and nurses, who have staged strikes protesting poor pay, and police officers who have also engaged on a go-slow for similar reasons.
SRC on Tuesday outlined what public officers, including Governors, Senators and Members of the National Assembly, and the Speakers of the two Houses should ideally earn, and left its fate to today’s public debate.
It also emerged that the top 3,600 earners whose proposed salaries were listed would still have to lose 30 per cent of the new pay to the taxman, including MPs who have been notorious in dodging the law.
 Contract matters
The upcoming review to harmonise the public sector wages to make them sustainable is planned after the March 4 General Election. From today, and until February 15, the proposed salaries will be subjected to public hearings
“The new pay structure will take effect from the date we gazette them and this will be before the election so that we hand over to the County governments the remuneration structure,” SRC’s commission secretary Ms Grace Otieno, told The Standard in an interview Wednesday.
SRC is, however, yet to decide on how to deal with employees who are on contract given this could be subject to a legal dispute. “We will look at individual contracts of the office holders to determine the exact date when the new pay structure will be applicable,” Ms Otieno added.
But Law Society of Kenya (LSK) chairman Erick Mutua insisted the new salaries take effect immediately and apply to everyone, including those on contracts. “SRC has a constitutional mandate to harmonise salaries and once the public input has been factored in, then it is incumbent upon the Treasury to implement the changes,” he argued.
Mutua added: “Parties who will feel aggrieved by the changes have the option of moving to court for interpretation. But I can assure you that though the Judges were affected, they will uphold the position of the SRC on this matter that is of much public concern.”
But Mars Group head Mr Mwalimu Mati differed, saying salaries for officers with long-running contracts, especially the constitutional office holders, would not be affected by the new changes.
“You cannot revise downwards salaries for those holding contracts with tenure of office. What will happen is that the changes will affect those who will replace them once the term of office comes to an end,” Mati said.
The chairmen of the Public Service Commission, Teachers Service Commission, Transition Authority, Ethics and Anti-corruption commission, Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the chair of the Commission on Revenue allocation take a pay cut as they will now earn a flat rate of Sh750, 000 on the higher side and Sh562, 500 on the lower side.
As the debate raged, SRC disclosed it had embarked on a process to review the salaries of other cadres.
“We have given ourselves a deadline of March 31st to complete a review of the rest of the public service and this may be sooner. We will seek to harmonise the disparities in the public service but this does not mean we will equalise,” Ms Otieno said
SRC is already hunting for an international consultancy firm to conduct the evaluation of the public service roles ranging from messengers to doctors with the view of scoring how critical their positions are.
Job evaluation
 “The firm would be selected within one week. Treasury has committed to set aside the funds for the evaluation. The consultant is expected to finalise the evaluation by mid next month to allow us time to analyse the findings,” Ms Otieno said.
It is estimated that the exercise would cost about Sh200 million to complete.
She said the tender for consultancy had been floated internationally because none of the local  firms met the minimum qualifications set out by the SRC, which is capacity to evaluate about 2,000 positions.
“Our local firms refused to form a consortium; that way they would have shown capacity to handle such a huge role,” she said.
The job evaluation considers among other things the budget controlled by the respective offices, the decision-making involved and the level in the command chain of all government official. 
The Standard has also learnt that governors will not necessarily earn more just because of the size of their county in terms of economic activity or potential. Ms Otieno said SRC is waiting for the Transition Authority to set the parameters and performance requirements of the county governors.
“We don’t want the differences in pay at any levels because this will be against the constitution. The fact that a governor is presiding over a smaller county in terms of wealth may as well mean that they have more work to do to equalise their status with the bigger counties,” Ms Otieno said.
This means that a governor running Nairobi will not necessarily earn more than their colleagues just because they control more than half of Kenya’s GDP.
However, the governor’s pay will remain within the set minimum and maximum in case of any disparity created after the parameters are set.




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