KPA leads the way in unplanned recruitment in the public sector

Fuel Tankers enter Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) Yard in Mombasa. Report says KPA is leading the way in creating new offices without conducting workload analysis.

Five institutions, including State House, have been exposed as leading in the haphazard creation of new offices, inflating the public wage bill without assessing the need for the staff they are adding to their payrolls.

The creation of new offices entails the introduction of new functions or units that require the recruitment of new staff to an institution and not necessarily physical offices.

The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), the Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC), the Public Service Commission (PSC), State House, and the State Department of Parliamentary Affairs are leading the way in creating new offices without conducting workload analysis, according to a PSC report.

“Of the 4,749 new offices established in the past three financial years, 4,679 (98.5 percent) offices were established without a workload analysis being undertaken, while 70 (1.5 percent) offices were established after undertaking a workload analysis,” the PSC report notes.

The PSC values report shows that the five institutions created 93 percent of new offices in the public service in the three years to June last year, revealing one of the biggest contributors to the public wage bill.

The KPA created 2,442 offices over the three years, followed by the KRC which created 1,767 offices, the PSC (100), the State Department of Parliamentary Affairs (95) and State House created 15 new offices.

The PSC analysed the creation of new offices in the public service between 2021/22 and 2023/24 and found that 74 out of 330 institutions established 4,749 new offices.

However, the creation of new offices without carrying out a workload analysis is against the law, which requires it to be based on comprehensive plans based on the public body's workload analysis.

“The Commission may establish an office in the public service after receipt of a written request by an authorised officer of a public body if the Commission is satisfied that the request is based on comprehensive plans informed by the public body's workload analysis (and) the financial implications of creating the office are indicated,” reads the PSC Act, 2017.

The creation of new offices means hiring staff to work in them, which has an impact on the public wage bill.

Kenya's public wage bill increased by Sh136 billion from Sh1.035 trillion in 2021/22 to Sh1.17 trillion in 2023/24, although there were other factors that led to the increase apart from the creation of new offices.

The PSC report adds that the majority of new offices (2,536) were created in 2021/22, followed by 2023/24 when 1,935 offices were created and in 2022/23 the institutions created 278 new offices.

The PSC notes that 60 of the 74 institutions that created new offices over the three years did not carry out a workload analysis to inform the creation of the offices. Overall, 243 out of 316 public institutions had not carried out a workload analysis.

“The leading reasons cited were resource constraints at 144 (45.6 percent), followed by perceived complexity and inapplicability at 33 (10.4 percent), and organisational bureaucracies and processes at 23 (7.3 percent),” the report notes.

The 14 institutions that have created new positions and conducted workload analyses include the Office of the Auditor General, the Office of the Deputy President, the State Department of Lands, the Anti-Counterfeit Authority, the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (Sasra) and Masinde Muliro University;

Public institutions are required to undertake a workload analysis to determine the amount of work to be done by a person or machine in a given period of time and to determine the skills and competencies required to do the work, which should inform the design of the organisational structure and the optimal staffing levels.

The approved establishment plan in turn informs the number and type of new offices to be created and staff to be recruited.

However, the PSC report found that 88 percent of institutions that created new offices had not conducted a workload analysis in the past three years, in contravention of Section 27 of the Public Service Commission Act, 2017.

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