Uhuru says all elected leaders will take pay cut

All leaders elected in August will take a pay cut, President Uhuru Kenyatta has said.

For this remark on Wednesday, the President risks facing the collective wrath of politicians.

He said this was a recommendation by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission to tame the ballooning wage bill.

President Kenyatta argued that it was the leaders’ duty to take the pay cut to “respect the wishes of our own employers, the wananchi”.

“Today, the public wage bill stands at Sh627 billion per year, amounting to 50 per cent of the total revenues collected by the government paid to only 700,000 people,” President Kenyatta told a joint sitting of both Houses on Wednesday.

The Sh627 billion for only 700,000 public officers is the classic case of man-eat-man society: a half of a country’s revenue lines the pockets of only two per cent of its population.

Kenya has one of the region’s largest number of politicians with 1,940 elected leaders and 1,130 nominated ones across six elective posts. A whopping 3,072 leaders representing 42 million Kenyans.

And with legislative authority and power to appropriate funds, the leaders have turned cannibalistic, bulldozing their way to heavy pay checks at the expense of other workers and forcing a helpless salaries team to bend the rules to satisfy their huge appetite for cash.

MPs dropped a bid to receive Sh2.1 billion pay for the eight months they said they will “lose” because of the August General Election. This followed a protracted battle with the salaries commission, which had rejected the leaders’ demand.

“As your President, and as a Kenyan, I fully support the recommendations and I call upon all of us to adopt them,” said the President of the proposals contained in a report from the pay team.

President Kenyatta also faulted workers’ unions which he said had pressured his government into an impossible situation on pay increases.

Doctors, nurses and teachers have gone on strike during President Kenyatta’s term.