Massive retrenchment in the civil service targets 40,000 workers

The government could spend up to Sh185 billion to retrench as many as 40,000 civil servants by the end of next year, according to a confidential draft report seen by the Sunday Nation.

The comprehensive document proposes that the public servants asked to opt for retirement would be offered between Sh450,000 and Sh750,000 as “golden handshake” upon retirement.

“The recommendations on optimal staffing analysis have indicated that implementation of the Capacity Assessment and Rationalisation of the Public Service (CARPS)  should result in overall downsizing of the public service establishment by a total of 38,858 at  both  National and County Governments,” says the document.

The report, which is yet to be presented to President Uhuru Kenyatta, has also unearthed several inequalities in the public service, including unfair distribution of jobs among ethnic communities.

The report has been prepared by the Intergovernmental Steering Committee for Capacity Assessment and Rationalisation of the Public Service formed by the Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru.

Not for the first time, last week, Ms Waiguru denied reports of a planned retrenchment. But the report’s recommendations are likely to put the government in a tight spot. 

President Kenyatta launched the programme in July last year to cut down on the country’s ballooning wage bill — said to be at least Sh550 billion — and weed out ghost workers. 

A subsequent biometric audit of the public service human resource at the national and county levels revealed a total of 199,921 civil servants. The counties have 126,998 employees while the national government has 72,923 on its payroll.

The government committee has been working with human resource consultants Ernst &Young to develop the framework that could see the implementation of the second major retrenchment plan since independence, if the recommendations are adopted. According to the report’s analysis, the recommended number of workers needed at the national government is 53,766 while the number required at the county level is 107,297.

And the report also proposes that those identified for retrenchment should be paid a three-month salary as exit bonus for every year worked. This is part of recommendations for developing specific guidelines “for the establishment of options and incentives”. 

In order to make the exit attractive there is also the recommendation to set up a revolving fund of Sh10 billion for exiting staff to access soft loans.

Further, the number identified for retrenchment excludes some 5,008 public servants expected to exit by June next year after attaining the mandatory retirement age of 60 years.

The rationalisation strategy is, however, not all about retrenchment. There is, for example, a proposal to transfer 699 to hardship areas and 628 currently in hardship areas moved to other parts of the country to redistribute professional and technical skills.

Another 2,258 government staff currently working in their home districts would also be moved to other work stations to help achieve ethnic balancing.

Those to be targeted for retrenchment, according to the recommendations of the report, include 1,000 in the 50 years age bracket and another 10,735 in the 50-59 age groups.

Also to be affected are 13,375 civil servants whose academic qualifications are lower than the secondary level and another 13,830 would be identified through other means before the exit plan is rolled out.

More than 20,000 civil servants with primary education certificates, the report recommends, should be encouraged to exit and their jobs outsourced in order to help the government save money.

“There are 26,743 public servants (13 per cent of total biometrically registered public servants) with primary school education and below,” reveals the report. The quality of staff in county governments, which inherited some staff from the defunct local authorities, has particularly come under scrutiny.

“Majority of the county governments are burdened with excessive numbers of administrative/office and support services staff, including large numbers of poorly educated and unskilled and yet over-compensated employees inherited from the defunct local governments,” says the report.

The biometric survey conducted by the committee since last year also reveals that the country’s public service is dominated by six ethnic communities.

“The civil service does not reflect the face of Kenya in terms of ethnic balance as required by the Article 232 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010,” the report says in part.

Another intractable problem seems to be the existence of ghost workers — whose number the report puts at 4,541.

There is the recommendation to clean up the payroll as investigations continue to catch those responsible for introducing non-existent workers into the system.

“Unaccounted for employees should be investigated and their salaries stopped. There is a need for further investigations to be carried out to determine whether loss of funds has already occurred in terms of erroneous/fraudulent payments,” the report reveals.

Last year, President Kenyatta shocked the nation by revealing the government was losing Sh1.8 billion annually in salaries paid to non-existent, dead, retired or sacked workers who were still on the payroll. 

And in a baffling discovery, 36,378 people are thought to be working in government but are not on the payroll.

The report is recommending the freezing of employment in the counties with those yet to employ ward and village administrators to be persuaded to stop the plans and make use of existing national government structures.

“County governments may be persuaded to take advantage of services of chiefs and sub-chiefs instead of recruiting what would be a large number of village administrators,” it says.

The report is further proposing that creation of more state departments within ministries should also be avoided and advises that in future each ministry should only be run by one Principal Secretary.

“In future, with due consideration of the factors of rational and efficient grouping of functions, enabling accountable reporting,  workload and span of control, with exception of the Executive Office of the President, ministries should constitute one state department and therefore under the administration of one Principal Secretary,” says the report.

There are currently 19 ministries down from 42 in the last Grand Coalition Government. However, most departments and staff have been retained. 

But coming up with the report, which is expected to be launched soon, has not been without problems with some counties and even national government officials reportedly resisting the programme.

But even though the report is yet to be made public, workers’ unions have indicated they will reject some of the recommendations. The Secretary-General of the Union of Kenya Civil Servants Tom Odege says as far as he is concerned the objective of the process is to ensure that workers are equipped with the right skills and enhanced capacity for their roles. 

“If their intention was to cause joblessness in the name of rationalisation then they will face serious resistance and we will not be party to it,” says Mr Odege. 

He explains the union’s expectation last year was that the programme would address salary inequalities in the services and enhance work environment instead of engaging in negative energy aimed at increasing national poverty.

The Trade Union Congress of Kenya (TUC-K) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion also says he has yet to read the draft report but warns the government should not expect cooperation if the rationalisation programme turns against the workers.

“If the intention was to cause harm to the workers then we will not allow it. But for now we are yet to see the report and we can’t say much,” says Mr Sossion.

But TUC-K Executive Director Njeru Kanyamba thinks it is still too early to go into a panic over loss of jobs as the report was still in its nascent stage.

Kisii Governor James Ongwae, who is a member of the committee that came up with the report, says the intention of the county governments is not to cause joblessness.

“The said report is in the formative stages. But if someone is doing it with the intention of retrenching people and causing hopelessness, then we will abandon it. We were looking at it in terms of creating opportunities, deploying and retraining staff not sacking people,” says Mr Ongwae.

Additional reporting by Ngare Kariuki.