Civil servants oppose fresh listing

Civil servants have opposed a plan to register employees afresh to weed out ghost workers.

Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru on Tuesday said the government was planning to conduct a biometric registration of public servants to clean up the payroll.

However, the Union of Kenya Civil Servants denied that there were ghost workers in the national government.

“There could be some ghost workers in the county governments but not in the public service,” said secretary-general Tom Odege.

“Let the government not use this to victimise innocent workers who were hired competitively.”

Speaking during a radio interview with Nation FM on Tuesday Ms Waiguru announced that the government would begin biometric registration of public servants in September in Nairobi and then move to other regions.

HUDUMA CENTRES

All public servants would be required to register at Huduma Centres. The registration should be completed in October, she said.

There are 70,000 public servants in the national government and a similar number in county governments, according to the union.

Ms Waiguru said the government had done an audit and established that ghost workers existed.

She said some counties were losing millions of shillings paid to non-existent staff.

Narok County, she said, had been losing Sh300 million annually in salaries paid to non-existent employees.

Further, the Devolution Secretary said the government was keen on reducing its wage bill. “Our wage bill is not sustainable. This shouldn’t continue.”

Ms Waiguru said Kenya’s wage bill is 53 per cent of the national Budget.

RUN PARALLEL

The biometric registration of public servants will run parallel to the ongoing staff rationalisation at nationally and in the counties.

The staff reorganisation was launched in July and entails transferring, sacking or redeploying public servants to understaffed ministries, departments and county governments.

It is being undertaken by the Ministry of Devolution and Planning, the Public Service Commission, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, the Council of Governors, the civil servants union and the Transition Authority.

The government and the civil servants’ union have insisted that it will not result in job losses.