Abolish Provincial administration, MPs allowances, says Commission for Revenue Allocation Chairman Micah Cheserem

By Luke Anami

Kenya: The custodian of revenue allocation to county governments wants the Provincial Administration abolished and sitting allowances for MPs, senators and members of the county assemblies reviewed to lower Government spending.

According to Commission for Revenue Allocation Chairman Micah Cheserem, unless these measures, including a tightening procurement laws, accompany the planned retrenchment of public service staff, efforts to reduce the wage bill and the costs of running the national and county governments will be in vain.

In a seven-point raft of recommendations, the former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya proposed the formation of a special unit to operate from the Office of The Deputy President to control wastage of public funds.

He also said the Jubilee government should halt payment of salaries and allowances to “ghost workers” from April.

“There has been a lot of talk on how to curb the wage bill, but so far none is concrete enough to tackle the problem,” Mr Cheserem said in an interview with The Standard.

“I want to propose seven ways in which the Government can effectively manage the wage bill. First, it should avoid duplicating duties at both national and county levels,” said the CRA chairman.

Citing the example where the Provincial Administration’s roles are now being duplicated by the new county governments, Cheserem advised that either the former be scrapped or the latter stop hiring administrators to carry out similar roles.

“County governments are employing administrators at the village level whose roles are already being carried out by the provincial administration. This should be avoided at all costs. The Government should form a task force to review parallel roles played by the provincial administration as well as the county government administration,” he said, adding that MPs should not be paid sitting allowances.

“MPs, senators and MCAs are all claiming sitting allowances for work that they are paid to do. One way is to stop all the sitting allowances as they are eating into the budget,” he said.

Kenya’s procurement laws are some of the most complicated in the world and now CRA wants a task force formed to review and simplify both the law and the procedures.

“Take for example, the supply of photocopy paper in CRA alone. It cost Sh850 to buy a rim of photocopy paper through the Government’s procurement system when one can buy the same at Nakumatt stores or any other supermarket at Sh350, which is less than a half the cost,” Cheserem explained.

Procurement laws

“This is because most of the suppliers of Government equipment and stationery are brokers. There are no genuine suppliers of office stationery to Government offices,” said the CRA boss. This, said Cheserem, is because most genuine manufacturers of stationery are not able to directly supply the Government at market rates due to what he termed as “bad law”.

“A task force to review procurement laws and procedures should be in place by September this year. Simplify the procurement process, make it transparent, so that the genuine suppliers can qualify,” said Cheserem

And even on cutting jobs in the public service, Cheserem warned that the focus should be on changing the current structure, which is top heavy with executives earning fat salaries.

“When President Uhuru Kenyatta announced a Cabinet of 18 down from the former 42 ministers, did you hear of anyone being retired from the public service? The current structure inherited too many departments some of which are carrying out similar roles.”

Echoing the words of Cheserem, deputy governors who recently met in Naivasha have vowed not to pay the ghost workers.

“When we met in Naivasha, the Cabinet Secretary for Health insisted that we pay ghost workers money which we have to refund to the national government. This is not acceptable. How can we pay ghost workers when we know they are non-existent?” said Prof Philip Kutima, Deputy Governor of Kakamega County.

Recommending a headcount, Cheserem said: “There are cases where some employees, especially doctors, failed to report to areas they were posted to, but we discovered that they were still in service elsewhere. That’s why counties should only pay those physically present, but report those absent,” said he.

The CRA boss called for the formation of a task force assisted by donors to review the number of staff in the national government, with the aim of restructuring the civil service.