Big tribes lose out in State jobs under new law

Qualified workers from communities that dominate civil service jobs will miss out on appointments and promotions under a new law that seeks to promote ethnic minorities.

The Public Service (Values and Principles) Act, 2015 seeks to balance the share of public jobs in favour of the smaller communities even at the expense of merit.

The new law look set to affect civil servants and job seekers from four tribes that dominate the civil service as captured in a report by the Public Service Commission (PSC) earlier this year.

The law, which started to apply on June 4, 2015, says that fair competition and merit will be overlooked in the quest to achieve ethnic balance in the civil service.

“The public service may appoint or promote public officers without undue reliance on fair competition or merit if an ethnic group is disproportionately represented in the public service or in a public institution,” the Act says.

Merit will also be overlooked in the need to strike gender balance and the hiring of people with disabilities in line with the constitution.

According to the PSC report, members of the Kikuyu community take up the largest share of civil service jobs, followed by those from the Kalenjin, Luhya and Kamba communities.

Together, they control 58 per cent of the workforce in government ministries, departments and agencies.

The report dated December 2014 was the product of a survey conducted in 168 agencies with a workforce of 94,286.

It was meant to guide the commission in future hiring as it looks to reduce the gaps to ensure that the public service has a national face as demanded by the Constitution.

“Taking the size of Kenya’s ethnic groups in the national population into account, the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Kisii and Embu have a fairly large representation relative to their population,” it says.

This law’s implementation is likely to benefit members of smaller communities as the government moves to raise the number of teachers and police officers among other government workers.

Last week, the Teachers Service Commission advertised the recruitment of 5,000 new teachers.

The PSC report however warned that implementation of the Constitutional demands may be hampered if the smaller communities lack qualified people.

“It should be noted that employment is a function of, among other factors, skill, knowledge and literacy, which, in progression towards compliance, will slow down equal representation among the minorities unless they improve their low literacy skills,” the report said.

According to the data, the Somali community has the highest deficit in the public service at 4.4 per cent, followed by the Turkana at 2.2 per cent.