Police get back cash after pay cut saga

National Police Service Commission Chairman Johnstone Kavuludi addresses the press in Eldoret on March 12, 2018 ahead of vetting of chief inspectors of Police. The NPSC has began a process to identify officers who were paying taxes undeservingly. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Those affected by the pay cuts were officers who had acquired university degrees and were rewarded with higher salaries.
  • The NPSC is going ahead with a process to identify those who are getting salaries of graduate constables yet they do not deserve.

Tens of junior police officers whose salaries were drastically reduced last month have a reason to smile after new payslips showed the pay cut was rescinded.

Officers who logged into the government’s human resources online portal received April payslips indicating they would get higher salaries at the end of the month.

Those affected by the pay cuts were officers who had acquired university degrees and were rewarded with higher salaries, and others who were exempted from paying taxes because they were disabled.

GRADUATES
A number of officers shared with the Nation individual pay details they obtained from Government Human Resource Information System, which is a service that is accessible to government employees using unique passwords.

The decision to reduce the salaries was occasioned by an audit by the National Police Service Commission (NPSC), which revealed some graduate police officers colluded with crooked seniors to get higher pay.

The officers took advantage of a gap in their employment terms that allowed graduates to earn higher salaries than colleagues with lower academic qualifications.

This triggered a rush for higher qualifications as officers who joined the service on the strength of a secondary school certificate sought university degrees and were subsequently considered as constable graduates.

CROOKS
After the pay cut, officers who had taken loans and mortgages were left with negative income.

But even as the government rescinded the decision, NPSC is going ahead with a process to identify those who are getting salaries of graduate constables yet they do not deserve.

Another process is on to identify more officers who were paying taxes undeservingly.

The NPSC has constituted eight committees to interview officers and decide whether or not they deserve tax reliefs.

The Kenya Revenue Authority exempts disabled Kenyans from hefty taxation.

In Nairobi, the committee to vet disabled officers conducted interviews at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations Training School in South C.

Other teams sat in Nyeri, Embu, Nakuru, Garissa, Kakamega, Kisumu and Mombasa.