It’s time taxpayers got value for money

Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru (left) witnesses Kisumu Deputy Governor Ruth Odinga, assisted by Julius Wadenya of Ernst & Young, register during the launch of Biometric Data Registration in Kusumu in late September. [PHOTO: TITUS MUNALA/STANDARD]

The easy part—conducting a countrywide biometric registration of civil servants—is over. Let the hard part—matching qualifications and experience of employees with their job assignments and conducting credible investigations to bring the perpetrators to book—begin.

All too often, demands for salary increases have eclipsed debate on whether the hapless taxpayers get value for money. Hence, attempts to improve productivity in the public service are welcome.

It is instructive that the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) back-tracked, early this week, on earlier promises of increasing their employees’ salaries and confirmed the issue will be back on the table only after completion of a job evaluation exercise.

Analysts agree that the government is on the right track when it insists that future salary reviews take into account the principles of equity, fairness, evidence of productivity and fiscal sustainability of the entire public service. Hopefully, the government will stand firm on this new realism expected to reverse the situation that has developed over the past few years whereby the public service pays better than the private sector despite the latter being the engine powering the country’s economy.

Devolution Cabinet Secretary Ann Waiguru and Public Service Commission (PSC) Chairperson Margaret Kobia are to be commended for steering the exercise that will allow the government to carry out job evaluations better despite meeting well-publicised resistance from unions. Also for launching investigations to unearth identity of individuals who have been benefiting from retention of 12,500 ghost workers on the payroll.

But analysts warn that the entire exercise could degenerate into a game of musical chairs where there is plenty of motion but no movement unless there is continued political will to bring the perpetrators of the notorious system that was well known to top government officials to book.

The political will would ensure that all the law enforcement arms of government work in tandem. The recent practices of suspects rushing to court to stop other arms of government from doing their lawful work should, for example, not be tolerated any longer.

The continued government commitment will be demonstrated and judged on just how thoroughly the investigations are carried out and whether the perpetrators are taken to jail and the property they acquired using their ill-gotten wealth recovered.

The investigations must also include an audit of civil servants life-styles because it does not take rocket science to recognise that the presence of ghost workers on government payroll is also linked to continued corruption in the service.

Corruption robs people seeking service from public officials of their hard-earned cash and leads to payments for non-delivered goods. Delivery of sub-standard merchandise whose prices have been inflated several times is also a time-honoured practice that should be tackled as part of the clean-up exercise.

Eating trough

Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of putting right a service that was once the envy of the entire former British Empire. It has to be appreciated that the country has not only been losing more than the estimated Sh1.8 billion a year to ghost workers but the continued impunity of its perpetrators led to the de-motivation of the other civil servants who knew what was going but were locked out of the eating trough.

The fact that the scheme was carried out by senior officials also meant that the individuals involved lost any moral authority to supervise their juniors who knew exactly what was going on but could not do anything about it.

Evidence from other sectors suggest that the individuals involved in the vice did as little real work in their offices as they could get away with and only paid lip service to other ethical and integrity issues. The result has been a dysfunctional public service that has been a hindrance to the country’s development.

It would be too much to expect that the perpetrators will meekly sit by watching the noose tighten around their necks. This is why it may be necessary to immediately ask those suspected to be behind the syndicates to proceed on leave to await the outcome of the investigations.

It may also be necessary to place a caveat on all the suspects’ known properties. The caveats should also be extended to the spouses and other relatives’ properties including their children.

The exercise should not be confined to those in the service but should be extended to the retired ones some of whom may actually have set up the schemes which they handed over to their successors. The outcome of these investigations would shed light on a mystery that has baffled many a Kenyan and foreigner alike; the club of rich people is almost entirely made up of civil servants.

These are current and former ones — and those appointed to run State corporations when they are, at least on paper, paid less than the people working in the private sector. In other countries—especially in the developed ones — industrialists, innovators and people running businesses are the rich ones.

The hope is that a thorough clean-up of the public service would send the right signal that crime does not pay, in the long run, although it might do so in the short-term.

The sad truth is that the continued tolerance of shenanigans in the public service sends the message that it is alright to break all the rules in pursuit of wealth. After all, the worst the culprit can expect to suffer, when found out, is a slap on the wrist. Many do not even suffer that indignity.

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