Counties

City Hall salary, perks allocation increased by Sh747m

City-hall

An aerial view of Nairobi City Hall. FILE PHOTO | NMG

City Hall has increased allocation for staff salaries and perks by Sh747.4 million in the year to June amid a recruitment drive to replace its aging workforce.

Through the supplementary budget tabled before the county assembly, City Hall has raised the allocation for staff costs from Sh5.62 billion to Sh6.01 billion.

The supplementary budget shows that the additional funds will foot employee costs in the county executive office but excludes those in the four departments that were transferred to the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS).

Employee costs include salaries, allowances, medical expenses and contributions like National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and pension.

The increased allocation comes at a time City Hall has been on a recruitment drive to replace its aging workforce and improve its enforcement action against businesses that default on payments of various levies and fees.

City Hall last year started the process of hiring 1,490 additional workers that included 800 security constables, 200 firefighters and over 400 Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) care givers.

The recruitment drive was first announced in March last year in the middle of the transfer of four functions from the county to the National Government through NMS.

City Hall has a stretched workforce in emergency and disaster response department with only 120 trained firefighters and 13 were due to retire at the end of last year.

Staff in the transport, health, public works as the county government planning and development are currently paid from the NMS kitty. City Hall has blamed the stretched workforce for failure to enforce compliance of city by-laws and also nab businesses and motorists who default on payment for permits, rates and parking fees.

A biometric report in 2019 showed that about a half of City Hall’s employees were over 50 years and were for retirement soon.

The report showed that out of the 11,603 City Hall workers, 5,709 are aged 50 years and above with only 792 of the employees below the age of 35.

A total of 2, 712 workers were aged between 55 and 59 years, 2, 978 aged between 50 and 54 years and another 2, 663 (between 45 and 49 years).