What’s in store for Chumo at salaries commission if cleared

Former Kenya Power MD Dr Ben Chumo who has been nominated to be Salaries and Remuneration Commission boss. [File, Standard].

If approved by Parliament as Salaries and Remuneration (SRC) chairman, which is highly likely, Ben Chumo will be walking into a job that not only befits his human resource management doctoral degree, but also into a fire pit.

As former Kenya Power Company (KPC) boss ponders how he will present himself before the National Assembly’s Finance and Planning Committee, the corporate titan-turned-university don must be thinking of what lies in his in-tray and where he would start should he be approved as the next Salaries and Remuneration (SRC) chairman.

Higher pay

Most importantly, he will be facing a panel whose members are part of a bandwagon demanding higher pay. Parliament and the SRC are currently in court over a decision by the former commission to abolish car grants, mileage allowance and sitting allowances for plenary sessions on top of reducing MPs’ salaries.

And as a taste of things to come, lecturers threatened to go on strike again if the Government fails to give universities the Sh10 billion meant for their pay rise. Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) secretary general Constantine Wasonga said he did not understand why the money had not been released to public universities.

“We are not afraid of going back to strike, we are well known for that. The Government should immediately release the money, failure to which we are going to issue a fresh strike notice,” threatened Wasonga.

Apart from a looming lecturers strike, Chumo would also have to contend with a fresh push by MPs to increase their salaries and allowances. Add this to the unsustainable wage bill and unfinished business with teachers and doctors over the implementation of their Commercial Bargaining Agreements (CBAs), and his first day in office will be busy.

As the head of Kenya Power, Dr Chumo was for a long time fought by shadowy managers with self-entitlement who thought that he did not have the credentials to head the electricity distributor since he was not an engineer.

Dr Chumo, who has a doctorate degree in human resource management from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) has been supervising postgraduate students in the same university.

Now he will be walking into a commission whom the person he is set to replace as chair was so strong willed that the SRC was simply known as the Serem commission.

So strong willed was Sarah Serem as chair that several forces led by non-other than the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) and MPs fought several times to have her removed from the commission. The workers now say they hope in Chumo they will have a person who knows how to deal with employees having been head of a power firm.

“SRC should work at policy level. Its role is to advise and not set salaries. Serem made up her own policies but since Chumo was head of KPC where he negotiated successfully with his employees when we had an issue, we hope he is going to bring sanity at SRC,” Cotu secretary general Francis Atwoli told the Saturday Standard.

“When an employer has signed a CBA with workers and he is willing to pay, the document should simply be deposited at the industrial court. SRC has no role saying it has to approve the CBA,” said Atwoli.

Teachers also have their own demands which will make Chumo’s life harder.

“The indicator of a good SRC is industrial pay and the ability of workers to negotiate,” he said.

The first commission was marked more by struggles to survive from the onslaught of forces bent on stopping them from performing their mandate. Sill despite operating in a tough environment, the commission was able to carry out a full job evaluation of the entire public service and complete the setting up of the salaries of state officers.

It also set up policies for future adjustments of State officers but failed to tame the public wage bill. It rose at an average of 11 per cent annually for the six years the commission was in place.

As at the end of last year Treasury spent Sh627 billion to pay government workers. This is set to rise to Sh650 billion by the end of this financial year courtesy of a pay rise given to all civil servants in July last year, just two weeks to the presidential elections.

In her final report before she left the commission, Serem asked the Government to re-look its employment policies. Other financial organisations led by non-other than the International Monetary Fund have also raised similar concerns.

“We still have a long way to go. We need to look at the number of employees. Government institutions need to take a closer look at their employees,” warned Serem.