Sobriety, tough choices needed to tame ballooning wage bill

Yesterday, Members of Parliament and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) met to start two days of deliberations on a policy document prepared by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) to guide the remuneration of public sector employees.

The lack of a centralised framework for pay determination has resulted in salary inequalities which have not led to  industrial action and calls for better remuneration, but a rising wage bill as well. In the period 2013/2014, Kenya's wage bill stood at 12.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while most countries in Africa averaged 9.5 per cent. Actually, a ballooning wage bill and the need for harmonisation is what led to the creation of the SRC through the Kenya Constitution 2010. Its objective was to, among other things, inquire and determine the salaries and remuneration to be paid out of public coffers to public officers and make recommendations on the review of pensions.

According to the Institute of Economic Affairs, salaries and allowances accounted for 33.2 per cent of the national budget in 2014. That is before all other recurrent expenditure is considered. That means development, a key pillar of progress, gets a raw deal.

So it was with this in mind and the questions raised over the ballooning public wage bill that SRC embarked on a nationwide tour seeking public views before coming up with The Public Sector Remuneration and Benefits Policy that is now under discussion. A huge wage bill is an indication of a bloated, inefficient and expensive public service sector.

It is understood that even as SRC seeks avenues of cutting down on the wage bill, the policy document aims at ensuring workers are given fair and equitable compensation for the work they put in. This is welcome because in these harsh economic times, workers deserve better pay to preclude strikes.

In December 2014, in an apparent bid to minimise wastage, SRC scrapped 33 allowances from the public service that were projected to save the Government Sh125 billion annually. While scrapping those allowances, SRC harmonised other allowances for civil servants. These included house, hardship and leave allowances, from which teachers benefited.

However, the work of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission has not been easy; especially with resistance from teachers' unions that have been agitating for a huge pay rise, which the SRC argues is not sustainable. In 2013, when the Sarah Serem-led Commission attempted to reduce the salaries of Members of Parliament, the latter reacted by tabling a motion in Parliament seeking the disbandment of the commission. Such has been the tough environment under which the SRC has been operating even as it seeks to bring sanity and save the Government some money.

It is the expectation of the public that Members of Parliament, who have a proclivity for feathering their own nests, will not put their interests before everything else. The discussions with the SRC must be done under a climate of mutual understanding so that what is finally agreed upon will benefit the workers and save the country the losses it has incurred through corruption, bloated salaries, allowances and ghost workers who, even today, continue to draw salaries.

An exercise started by the Ministry of Devolution and which sought to flush out ghost workers appears to have lost steam. Another exercise that also sought to reduce the wage bill by laying off at least 60,000 workers seems to have been shelved, yet if the Government seeks to cut down on the wage bill, it will have to make some tough decisions.