Editorials

EDITORIAL: Plug perks’ loopholes

cash

SRC did its part trying to bring sanity to pay perks afforded to the MCAs. FILE PHOTO | NMG

High Court’s decision to restore some Sh1.5 billion in allowances and wages that MCAs had lost in the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC)-engineered cut, though painful to the Kenyan public, is one that must be accepted in the interest of rule of law.

The fact is that the SRC did its part trying to bring sanity to pay perks afforded to the MCAs in line with the quest to contain the national wage bill.

What happened in court is that the commission was found not to have followed the right procedure in doing so. It did not study the labour market nor conduct a compressive job evaluation a year before the pay review as required by the law. That is what the courts are there for.

Correcting this mistake will require the commission to move with speed in following the required procedure to fix this problem, which is even more pertinent today given the state of Kenya’s public finance. It would be a shame to leave open the avenues that these public officers use to appropriate funds in the manner they did before the SRC curbs.