Civil servants used unregulated allowance to increase their pay 13.5 percent or by Sh42.7 billion in an environment where their salary increases have been frozen.
Controller of Budget (CoB) data shows that taxpayers spent Sh358.49 billion in the nine months to March, up from Sh315.76 billion in the same period a year earlier.
The increase shines the spotlight on the over 247 remunerative and facilitative allowances paid to civil servants and have the effect of doubling their monthly pay.
Civil servants have in recent years turned to the allowances that the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) says are un-regulated, to increase their monthly take-homes.
“Allowances have become a major component of the total compensation package in the public sector, yet there lacks a common policy on its management,” SRC says in its draft on allowances for the public service.
TSC spent Sh205.9 billion on salaries and allowances, a Sh24.2 billion jump from similar period last year, followed by the Interior ministry whose spending rose by Sh9.3 billion to Sh68.6 billion.
The Office of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto spent Sh6.4 billion or Sh4.9 billion more on salaries and allowances.
Other departments that posted significant jumps were the Judiciary at Sh1.2 billion followed by the Members of Parliament, Judiciary and Ministry of Health at Sh1 billion each.
“In July, public sector institutions implemented the fourth and last phase of the review cycle, the figures thus most likely include pay increases,” SRC chairperson Lyn Mengich said last evening.
SRC has accused government officers of multiplying the number of allowances from just 11 in 1999 to 247.
Civil servants are paid remunerative and facilitative allowances but the SRC says many of the allowances being paid are already catered for through the workers’ basic pay.
Remunerative allowances are fixed in the pay slip and include house and commuter; hardship, extraneous, domestic and risk.
Facilitative allowances are paid to meet expenses incurred by officials in the course of duty such as daily
subsistence allowance or per diem, which are hidden and bump up civil servants’ pay.
Allowances account for 48 percent of the total wage bill that stood at Sh827 billion at June 2019, from Sh458 billion in 2013.
SRC says that the lack of uniform criteria for setting and paying allowances has attributed to the increase.
“In the absence of such a policy framework to guide the determination and payment of allowances in the public sector, different institutions pay allowances using different justifications, eligibility criteria, rates and modes of payment,” SRC adds.
The agency last week froze salary increase for all civil servants by two years, following a deal between the National Treasury and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to contain the ballooning wage public sector wage bill.
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