SRC in bid to freeze salaries of overpaid civil servants

All public servants currently earning extremely high salaries and allowances for their job groups will have their earnings frozen as the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) steps in to harmonise new pay bands.

The salaries body has published a draft policy document which, if implemented as it currently reads, will see workers earning more than their colleagues in the same job grade subjected to a pay freeze as others get increments.

The document is a result of a public consultation exercise that was kicked off by President Uhuru Kenyatta last March.

A freeze on new hires, salaries and allowance reviews instituted in November 2013 is still in place. It was introduced to slow down the growth of the wage bill, which now stands at over Sh500 billion.

“The remuneration and benefits levels of employees who, either, already earn disproportionate to employees in jobs that entail about the same level of competency, work load and responsibilities held frozen until realigned,” the draft public sector remuneration and benefits policy states in part.

“These disparities are as a result of fragmented salary and benefits structures, minimal harmonisation of salary structures and unco-ordinated reviews.”

The proposal to hold salaries will come as a relief to many civil servants who have been jittery about the job evaluation that has elicited fears of job, pay and allowance cuts.

SRC is currently finalising on the documents by getting stakeholders’ input before forwarding it to the Cabinet through the Finance minister.

Employees of the Transition Authority last week sued SRC for slashing their pay by up to 45 per cent from Sh300,000 to between Sh165,089 and Sh200,928.

The 44 employees say they were appointed as county co-ordinators in February 2013, with a starting monthly pay of Sh300,000 but a pay cut directed by SRC last October is to take effect this month.

READ: TA workers sue Serem for cutting salaries to Sh200,000

Some employees may, however, feel aggrieved since they may have to go for years without a pay review if the audit reveals that they are earning salaries that are way above others in their job group.

“A freeze on salaries will enable other workers in the same job group to catch up. An individual whose salary is frozen will only get a pay rise once he is promoted to the next job grade,” said Nicodemus Odongo, acting SRC deputy secretary.

Pay and allowance disparities are rife in the public service and has remained unchecked over the years.

This has resulted in thousands of disgruntled employees feeling they are being unfairly remunerated despite doing the same amount of work for a specific pay scale.

SRC vice chairperson Daniel Omondi on Monday gave an example of this inequality. He revealed that some cleaners in county governments are currently earning as much as Sh70,000, which is three times above what their counterparts in national government get.

If given the green light, the salary freeze will be implemented based on the findings of job evaluations that are being conducted across the Civil Service by consultants over the next two years.

SRC last year hired PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to carry out job evaluation for counties with one of the proposals being employees being paid based on the productivity of their counties.

Ernst and Young Limited (E&Y) has also been engaged to review State corporations while Deloitte and Touché is doing the same at government ministries.

“Remuneration bands will be developed by SRC in collaboration with the Public Service Commission and the Directorate of Public Service Management based on job evaluation to ensure parity, fairness across the employee categories,” the draft policy states in part.

READ: Ernst & Young to help trim civil service wage bill

The commission estimates that it will take about a month to finalise the document before releasing it to government to begin the process of operationalising it. Other proposals contained in the draft document include using the job evaluation exercise to come up with new pay bands.

The commission is proposing that adjacent bands should not have a pay difference of more than 20 per cent and that the highest paid employee in government should not earn more than 10 times what the lowest earns.

At the moment, the commission says, this pay gap is as high as 53 times. SRC is also proposing that all payments to civil servants should be made through a payroll that should also be connected to a central system for accountability purposes.

The commission says that at the moment, between 30 and 40 per cent of public servants’ salaries are paid through vouchers, making it difficult to ascertain gross salaries.

Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis, a State think-tank, says allowances have made the government the preferred employer and called for a radical review.

Currently, allowances have the effect of doubling employees’ pay and in some instances growing it by a factor of 10.

Public servants were last month awarded a hefty increase in travel allowances amounting to billions of shillings that make a mockery of the government’s commitment to reduce the public wage bill.

SRC however stated that it was implementing the enhanced stipend structure in order to enhance equity, harmony and take into account inflation.