Idle civil servants undermining service delivery

-Editorial

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s warning that Cabinet Secretaries who fail to deliver by the end of their first year in office will be sacked is undermined by the Government’s failure to rationalise the civil service.

The president must, at the very least, be aware that almost nine month’s after swearing into office a trimmed cabinet, failure to re-define roles and re-deploy employees in merged ministries has paralyzed work at the headquarters.

Particularly affected, are ministries such as Health, Education and Agriculture whose functions were devolved to the counties. They have parallel departments, ostensibly, dealing with accounts, procurement, administration and auditors. The majority of employees in these departments spend their working day idling away moving from office to office and chatting with friends. This means the surplus employees are not only unproductive, but are also a hindrance to those with work to do.

The situation at the Ministry of Health is especially heartbreaking because the professionals have flatly refused the proposed devolving of their functions and salaries to the counties where their expertise is needed most.

The result is that there are about 100 medical doctors at Afya House and at Kenyatta National whose work — disease control and prevention — are idle because those functions have been devolved to the counties.

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The conundrum at the Health Ministry is compounded by the fact that the headquarters was forced to pay the staff whose functions were devolved despite having sent their payroll to the counties. Not surprisingly, the governors, who have been attempting to drum up public support for their demand for more money, are not in a hurry to refund the money sent to them.

The working conditions at Afya House are not made any easier by the huge number of support staff compared to their technical employees. A complement of 550 support staff and 1,000 technicians skews the ratio to 2:1 compared to the more efficient benchmark of 20:1.

Clearly, this sad state of affairs cannot be allowed to go on for much longer. Indeed, the issue has been allowed to fester for long enough. Worse, it is costing the country an arm and a leg.

The duplication in salary payments, coupled by the paying of employees who are doing nothing is expected to have pushed the public wage bill from about Sh302 billion in 2012 to Sh458 billion in the last financial year. There are well-founded fears that the bill could go through the roof in the current financial year.

The continued procrastination over the re-deployment of staff whose functions have been devolved to counties is only likely to exacerbate an already bad situation. For starters, the governors have taken advantage to hire their own people and it is not clear what will happen when the Government finally attempts to transfer its surplus staff.

Perhaps, a closer look at the unfolding scenario will spur the national Government to do what it should have done several months ago; devolve functions, in tandem with staff, to the counties across the entire country.