Middle-level employees in the public service, among them doctors and engineers, will be the biggest winners in a new pay structure.
The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has come up with a new grading system whose implementation will be in the next Budget cycle.
The new structure is expected to be unveiled today following a job evaluation exercise for five sectors in the public service.
The new system will see some employees promoted and given higher pay. Others will be demoted in line with their ranking in grade. But those demoted in grading will not have their salaries reduced but instead will miss out on subsequent salary increments.
Under the new system to be effected from July 1 next year, civil servants will be classified between Grades A up to Grade E. The lowest grade will be A and the highest E. It will further be broken down into A1, A2, A3 among others.
"There are positions that were overvalued and will be coming down. There are those that will gain because their positions will be moving higher," SRC Chairperson Sarah Serem told The Standard.
Salaries for employees whose positions will not change will remain the same. Mrs Serem explained that the new pay will be implemented at the start of the next financial year when Treasury is expected to have factored in the increment in the budget.
"We have come up with a grading structure that harmonises the functions across the public sector. The structure looks at the worth of every position and it will be the basis upon which we will determine the pay," she said.
Serem explained that professionals and middle-level employees will be the biggest winners of the job-evaluation exercise given that their jobs were the most undervalued. The exercise will also recognise how long it takes to acquire a specific qualification.
For example, it will grade a graduate whose degree takes five years higher than the one whose degree takes four years. This will see doctors and engineers join the public service at a higher grade than their counterparts who studied humanities.
Those who have attained additional qualifications on the job may not necessarily benefit since the pay will only be based on the skill required to do a particular job and not the extra qualifications earned by the employee.
The Government currently has about 700,000 public officers on its payroll who share the Sh627 billion wage bill annually.
Currently, the highest paid employee within the public sector, excluding State officers, takes home about Sh300,000 while the lowest paid takes home about Sh10,000.
State Officers who include judges, elected officials and the Executive will continue earning their current pay until they leave office since their remuneration was captured in the 2013 salary review.
This means that those who will jump into the top cadre will earn about Sh300,000 subject to slight adjustments after negotiations with unions and the ability of Treasury to pay.
SRC says it is reviewing this to ensure that the lowest pay will be within the gazetted minimum wage levels as it maintains the highest paid level.
"The evaluation looked at what it takes to do the job. What kind of qualification it requires one to do the job. The pay will be depend on the responsibilities of that job, the kind of resources that it manages, the risk exposure and scope of work," she said.
SRC says it will not release the exact pay every employee will earn to allow the Government and the unions time to negotiate and agree.
"The negotiations will be guided by the grading structure that will show that they can only negotiate up to this level," she said.
The salary body explained that teachers have already been factored in the new survey that was part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement signed recently.
teachers' pay
Serem says teachers' pay will be untouched as agreed in the CBA even as she allayed fears that there would be job losses and salary cuts for civil servants found to be earning above their grade.
However, those who will join the service will enter under the new grades and get paid according to the new salary structure.
"We found that there were so many disparities in salaries among public servants because the determination of pay was not linked to a particular system. Every entity including unions and individuals negotiated their pay and depending on how close you were to the power, then perhaps you will get away with a slightly better remuneration package," Serem revealed.
"The object of the exercise is to bring in parity and ensure that we give equal pay for work of equal value," She said.
The salaries body says it will undertake a separate salary survey that will determine the annual increments that civil servants will get to factor in the cost of living and other adjustments. The last salary review exercise in the public sector was in 2012.
"We resolved that to be fair and just, and to have a system that is just, we had to adapt a system that is internationally acceptable. This is why we went the job evaluation way," Serem said.
SRC says it undertook a job evaluation exercise of the entire public service including counties, teachers, parastatals and is now moving to the disciplined forces and the public universities.
The review is the last phase of the exercise started in 2013 when SRC did a job evaluation and set salary scales for State officers including holders of elective positions.
"We did a salary survey which saw us establish that our salaries were way above comparable economies in the world and the region. It is important to relate our pay to the economic strength of our country," she said.
The State officers will keep their current pay, but with adjustments for cost of living.
