County staff get Sh500m in car loans, mortgages

City Hall taken on September 11, 2018. [Edward Kiplimo,Standard]

Nairobi City County Government employees will now be entitled to Sh500 million in car loans and mortgages starting July 1.

This is after the county assembly last week approved the Nairobi County Annual Development Plan for the 2021/2022 financial year.

The plan proposes a raft of allocations that will see the employees get additional perks and see an increment in the Public Service Management docket budget from Sh708 million to Sh2.7 billion.

This means that the county’s 12, 496 staff will access the allocated Sh250 million for car loans and Sh250 million for mortgages from the next financial year. The allocations have been captured under the recurrent vote.

This is the first time City Hall is providing such an allocation.

“All the members of staff are eligible to the car loan and mortgage irrespective of their cadres. Given that the funds have already been approved, the scheme will be effected by July this year,” said the Public Service Management County Executive Vesca Kangogo yesterday.

The CEC also defended the timing of the allocations, which come ahead of next year's General Election, saying that her department had been pushing for the funds.   

“We have been trying to introduce this in previous years but the county has not been allocating money for it,” said Kangogo.

Finer details such as how the employees will be able to access the millions and the repayment methods will be released soon.

This comes shortly after City Hall allocated, last month, Sh246 million for MCAs car grant. The funds were factored into the supplementary budget that is awaiting approval by the assembly. The grant followed a pledge by President Uhuru Kenyatta during a meeting with MCAs at the Sagana State Lodge in January.

At the same time, the Nairobi County government has set aside Sh100 million for a voluntary early retirement scheme for its staff aged 50 years and above. This is aimed at getting rid of an aged workforce as well as reduce City Hall's bloated wage bill.

According to the plan, allocations for various sectors in the public service department have also been reviewed upwards with the new allocations set to be effected from July 1 to ensure efficient service delivery.

The staff medical insurance allocation has been reviewed upwards by Sh450 million from a Sh650 million to Sh1.1 billion. The industrial training levy has also been increased by Sh30 million from a Sh8 million to Sh38 million. The budget for capacity building for the members of staff was also raised from Sh20 million to Sh30 million.

Kangogo explained that an increase in the medical insurance allocation was necessitated by a surge in the number of employees through an ongoing recruitment exercise.

“We have just recruited 1,200 constables who must also be factored into the insurance scheme,” said Kangogo, adding that the current budget for the medical scheme was Sh800 million and not Sh650 million as indicated in the plan.   

City Hall has allocated Sh16 million towards a biometric registration exercise for its workers to weed out ghost workers.

The department reduced its Sh30 million customer care budget by Sh15 million to Sh15 million.