Members of Parliament can use budget process to check Executive

By Kamotho Waiganjo

NAIROBI, KENYA: During the titillating drama in Parliament this week, the vexing question on how to arrest the public wage bill was unfortunately given a most casual attention by legislators. It is good that the legislators recognised that the size of the public service was one way to solve the wage bill crisis. It is only unfortunate that their attention was focussed solely on reducing the size of “busybody” commissions. MPs’ concern about the sustainability of the wage bill is long overdue and one prays that they will use their legislative powers to facilitate a radical rationalisation of the public service, hence reducing the wage bill.

Let me start with a confession. I don’t believe the greatest risk to the public wage bill is the increase of salaries and benefits to MPs per se. Considering that the consolidated public wage bill is more than Sh400 billion, the salaries of MPs are not the greatest assault on the public purse. Actually, the issue on MPs’ salaries is about fidelity to the Constitution and about basic principles of good governance; that public servants cannot be the ones who set their salaries, full stop.

 But back to the ballooning wage bill. In the last 10 years, more so in the waning years of the Grand Coalition, the size of the public service grew beyond the rational. What started off as an expansion of the Cabinet to accommodate all the   protagonists in the 2007 elections ended up expanding the public service beyond recognition. Each ministry was split in incomprehensible bits, sometimes leading to conflicting mandates and turf wars. Each resultant portfolio was then awarded the usual coterie of permanent secretaries, undersecretaries, directors and all the paraphernalia that go with Cabinet dockets.

Predictably, all manner of semi autonomous Government agencies were then set up complete with secretariats and large Boards of Directors, mostly to provide jobs for the boys and a couple of girls.

That is the hand that the Jubilee Government has been dealt. For this government to be efficient and the wage bill to be sustainable, not only will the ministries have to be rationalised, but so will the provincial administration, the parastatal sector and the numerous regional and sectoral authorities. This process will demand Solomonic wisdom.

This rationalisation is made more critical by the shifting character of our governance and service delivery framework. Whereas previously the Central government determined policy and effected implementation, the new framework has devolved implementation of most functions. This naturally means that the multiplicity of centralised institutions that previously existed to deliver services will either need to be dissolved or where still necessary converted to County based institutions. This shift provides a natural environment in which to cut most of the fat that now exists in the government and to ensure that this unnecessary fat is not exported to the Counties. A lot of excess fat also exists at the middle to upper echelons of the public service. Whereas the pay slip numbers for many of these officers may not look significant, their cost in allowances, travel, conference attendance and all those other perks that go with the public service are a major drain to the national purse. Considering that many of their responsibilities will in any event be devolved, this is the perfect opportunity to align personnel to service delivery.  One critical issue that the intergovernmental institutions must address in this process is how to balance the right of County governments to recruit their own staff with the need to reduce the cost of retrenching competent workers, as such cost will be borne by all, including County governments, reducing the revenue available for their development. Wanton retrenchment of staff should be avoided and send-offs should be restricted to cases where unsuitability is objectively determined.

In the rationalisation process, the critical role that our Parliament can play is to use the budget process to demand justification by the Executive for continued public funding of existing institutions. This process must be carried out in a lawful, reasonable and objective manner and must not be a means to settle real or perceived scores. If Parliament manages to facilitate rationalisation of the public service, we may just be able to forget the more unfortunate portions of last week’s drama.