Public servants will have their salaries and allowances reviewed every four years under new regulations meant to match increases in the cost of living.
The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has proposed an automatic review every four years in new regulations tabled in Parliament.
Currently, there are no timelines for reviewing pay for officers including teachers, lecturers, doctors and nurses.
The cost of living has risen sharply over the years, weakening the purchasing power of public servants whose monthly pay has not been reviewed to match the changing economic times.
The changes, if approved by Parliament will see the servants join State officers like the President and MPs whose pay is reviewed every four years.
“The commission shall review and advise on remuneration and benefits for other public officers every four years,” the commission says in the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (Remuneration and Benefits of State and other Public Officers) Regulations, 2022.
“The commission shall undertake the review taking into account the applicable national budgeting and planning cycles,” read the proposed regulations.
The cost of living measure will be based on the annual Consumer Price Index (CPI) that is given by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS). CPI for last year was 6.1 percent.
The lack of timelines anchored in law for automatic review of salaries and allowances of public servants has left strikes and Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) as the only avenues available to workers to push for pay increments.
SRC says that the pay reviews shall, however, be pegged on the budgetary allocations and performance targets at the various public offices.
The public sector wage bill that includes elected leaders is estimated at Sh830 billion per year, which is slightly more than half the government’s revenue for the year ended June 2021.
Tax collections by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) for the period to June last year stood at Sh1.669 trillion, and the target for the year ending this month is Sh1.8 trillion.
