Anxiety as Cabinet sacking, shuffle loom

Kenya: Anxiety has gripped Cabinet and Principal Secretaries as President Uhuru Kenyatta is said to be set to fire non-performers, re-assign others and appoint replacements based on results of an official performance audit, The Standard on Saturday can report.

The imminent Cabinet reshuffle and dismissals has put the CSs and PSs on the tenterhooks, because none of them knows what the President and his deputy will decide.

The Standard on Saturday can now reveal that the Public Service Commission rated the Cabinet Secretaries, the Principal Secretaries, and other senior government officers, and the report is scheduled for release next week.

The PSC audit looked at their performance for the past year.

It is understood that the official unveiling of the score-card for various officers was scheduled to have been made this week in a Cabinet meeting that was to be presided over by President Kenyatta.

The meeting was postponed to next week after it became impossible for the President’s diary to accommodate the event.

Insiders in government and in the Cabinet told The Standard on Saturday off the record that each of the Cabinet Secretaries knows his or her individual rankings, but they do not know how their colleagues performed. So, none of them knows whether they are safe or not and that has pumped up anxiety in the corridors of power.

Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru, who is the liaison between the PSC and the Executive, and who is steering public service reforms, confirmed that the audit was ready and each of the CSs knew how they had performed.

Not achieved targets

It is indeed true, she said, that each Cabinet Secretary has been shown their results but none is aware how their colleagues have fared.

Top officials in the Presidency confirmed that the Head of State will officially unveil the performance of various top government officials next week. But the officials declined to comment on the nature of action the President may prefer against public officers who had not achieved their targets.

A top official in the PSC told this newspaper that the score-card could have far-reaching repercussions on the careers of various State officers based on their performance.

The official, who did not want to be named because the matter is still being handled as a top government secret, further said even middle-level managers and junior officers would be held individually accountable for any form of ineptitude that may be exposed in the report.

 

Well-placed sources at State House confided in us that President Kenyatta has spent hours in Cabinet meetings warning all the CSs that the Jubilee administration would not tolerate laxity in service delivery to Kenyans.

A top State official said: “Some ministries may perform poorly because they do not focus on their targets or are performing uncoordinated tasks not within their targets. To enhance performance and improve service delivery, non-performing individuals must be held accountable and be put on a performance improvement program.”

“Similarly, some ministries might feel they have data on non-performing staff, in that case, the necessary authority should begin a disciplinary process and remove such individuals from the service. If no action is taken for non-performers, service delivery will continue to suffer and dent the image of the public service,” the official said.

Contacted for a comment, State House spokesperson Manoah Esipisu would only say, “This is not something I want to talk about now.”

Other sources in the Presidency told The Standard on Saturday that both President Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto had agreed to move away from the traditional random Cabinet reshuffle characteristic of the previous regimes to performance-based decisions.

The Standard on Saturday is privy to reports that the evaluation of the Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries and other senior public officers was ordered by the President to evaluate the performance of various sectors in government in order to ensure continuous improvement in delivery of service by the government.

Mixed opinions

Discussion on a possible Cabinet reshuffle has been ongoing since July this year. A few Principal Secretaries were reshuffled recently, but none was dropped.

This happened even as leaders from across the political divide expressed mixed opinions on the steps the President must take to ensure improved service delivery to the public.

Gwasi MP John Mbadi said Cabinet Secretaries who have shown laxity should be dropped from the Cabinet.

“You see, in a system like ours where the President picks his ministers, where such ministers fail to perform, the general perception would be that the President himself is not performing. This is why the President should proceed to sack such people. In other words, this mediocrity of refusing to perform should never be encouraged,” Mbadi said.

“Look at security, for instance, which has been a total mess. Except for the appointment of Major General Philip Kameru (as Director General of the National Intelligence Service), there is nothing else that gives us confidence that we are secure. That is something that should worry the President, as well as the chaos in the land sector, and so on,” he added.

Nyeri MP Priscilla Nyokabi said some CSs had misplaced priorities and would end up performing poorly because of poor application of resources.

“I don’t get the feeling that some of these CSs even have an idea of what their priorities are, but that said, those who will perform well need to be commended and encouraged to do more because there is still a lot that needs to be done. Those who do poorly must be told they need to work harder. There are ministries like security that have more than a thousand problems that need to be fixed. This is why we are saying ministers should appear before Parliament so that they can be accountable, so that we can offer them ideas,” Nyokabi said.