Payroll hitches to delay county workers’ salaries

By STANDARD TEAM

NAIROBI, KENYA: Thousands of workers seconded to county governments by the national government may not receive their January salaries as counties are still working on payrolls.

Governors said it would take some time before the exercise is concluded and salaries are paid.

The exercise to clean out the payrolls includes checking out duties of each employee.

The leaders, who spoke separately to The Standard during the ongoing Governors Summit in Naivasha, expressed fear that the payrolls they have inherited from the national government consisted of ghost workers and others are bloated.

They admitted they were facing challenges in the staff rationalisation. Meru County Governor Peter Munya said his officers were still going through the payrolls forwarded to them and they will conduct an audit of staff before paying salaries.

“The national government cannot run away from its responsibility. They have been with this people for over 50 years and counties cannot resolve the issue overnight,” he said.

The Ministry of Devolution and Planning transferred payrolls to counties on January 6. The national government has since installed the Interpreted Payroll and Personnel Database system in all the 47 counties and trained 219 officers on management of the work force.

Kwale County Governor Salim Mvurya said staff were transferred to the counties without much consultation, adding some of the payrolls consisted of ghost workers.

COMPETENCE AND SKILLS

“One of the challenges we are facing is that the national government transferred staff without consultation. We have found ourselves with more workers than we require,” he said.

Baringo County Governor Benjamin Cheboi said they were in the process of sorting out the payroll from the national government and that the exercise might take long to determine the type of staff, competence and skills before embarking on paying salaries.

“Each county has unique challenges. There is need to look at culture change, our targets and strategies as a county before we bring on board staff. Issues of skills, competence and culture change must be addressed alongside other human resource considerations,” said Cheboi.

Homa Bay County Governor Cyprian Owiti admitted the region is facing challenges in sorting national government payroll.

He said the county is in dilemma as they have more employees whom they inherited from defunct local authorities.

“The national government needs to look into the issue because county governments inherited a huge workforce from local authorities,” he said.

He said if counties would be forced to accommodate all staff from the national government, then they will have problems carrying out development projects because the bulk of the monies will go to personnel emolument.

Their sentiments, however, were in contrast with the position taken by the chair Council of Governors Isaac Ruto, who said they were ready for the staff takeover beginning at the end of this month.

“Counties want to take charge of the staff payrolls as early as this month in a seamless manner,” Ruto said. “We do not want anyone to prescribe solutions to governors on staff rationalisation because each situation is unique.”

Kisii County Governor James Ongwae, who chairs the Human Resource and Labour Committee of the Council of Governors, said the governors had discussed the entire issue of staff rationalisation and intend to engage the national government in further discussions.

MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

“There’s a meeting scheduled to take place at the Kenya Institute of Administration to find a solution on how to go about the staff rationalisation exercise, among other matters,” he said.

He noted that county governments inherited staff from the defunct local authorities and others from the Transition Authority, whose roles need to be defined.

“Counties are in the process of finding terms of reference and building capacities and these are some of the issues that need to be addressed,” he said. However, Ongwae noted some counties had put in place payroll management systems and might start paying salaries of seconded staff at the end of the month.

Ongwae said that staff rationalisation or restructuring would be done by counties depending on their needs as the issues affecting the regional governments were not the same.

“There are counties, which require a high number of professionals in particular fields due to historical problems relating to equitable distribution of resources while others are overstaffed,” Ongwae said.

He said counties can only take staff that they need and that the national government must determine what do with the rest.

In Kakamega, County Executive Committee Member in charge of Public Service Rachael Okumu said she was processing this month’s payroll for staff.

“I am processing the payroll for workers in the county, therefore, there will be no crisis in Kakamega. As far as I am concerned, the county government is meeting its obligations of paying staff,” she said.

Kenya National Union of Nurses Executive Secretary for Kakamega branch Renson Bulunya said nurses were assured of their pay by the county government but pointed out that some of their allowances (uniforms) have not been paid.

–– Reporting by Steve Mkawale Lydiah Nyawira, Munene Kamau, Kathure Mukuru, Bryana Tumwa and Benard Sanga and Patrick Beja.