Salaries team to reduce civil servants pay gap
PHOTO | JENNIFER MUIRURI Salaries and Remuneration Commission officials (from R to L) Ann Elizabeth Owuor, Jacqueline Mugo and vice-chairman Daniel Ogutu during the public forum on proposed salaries for State officers at the KICC in Nairobi on February 6 2013.
All civil servants will soon be appraised to ensure that salaries are pegged on the value their work adds to taxpayers.
The Salaries and Remuneration Commission’s chairperson, Ms Sarah Serem, on Monday said it would undertake a national job evaluation for all public servants which would also reduce the wage disparity among different job groups.
This will happen before the next government assumes office. Ms Serem also criticised the disparity between the highest paid State officer, the president, and the lowest paid civil servant.
“We benchmarked remuneration levels of comparable countries including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, Canada, UK and USA. We established that the wage differential between the highest and the lowest paid in Kenya is highest at 169 per cent compared to Canada which is the lowest at 7.9 per cent,” she said.
Kenya also fares worse than her regional neighbours. Rwanda has a differential of 72.2 per cent, while South Africa has eight per cent. This means that the salary of the president is only eight times higher than that of the lowest paid civil servant while in Kenya it is 169 times.
Led to strikes
Ms Serem pointed out that the proposed pay structure would reduce the wage differential from 169 to 82 per cent.
The exercise, she added, would avert wage disputes in public service which have led to strikes by civil servants such as nurses and teachers.
