Government in plan to sack aged workers

Cabinet Administrative Secretary Rachel Shebesh says aging workers to choose between early retirement and being sacked . [File, Standard]

The Ministry of Public Service is pushing to have civil servants nearing retirement age replaced with young people.

According to Cabinet Administrative Secretary Rachel Shebesh, the civil servants will be given the option of early retirement or face the sack.

The CAS was responding to questions on issues affecting youths in the country at an event held at the ministry’s offices

Ms Shebesh said the plan was to reduce the unemployment rate among  the youth, who have often accused the Government of leaving them out of civil service jobs.

According to Shebesh, the plan will be rolled out in all ministries.

“It will be painful but we might have to let some people go,” she said, adding that all ministries were under executive instructions to employ more young people and that the directive was now in its second year.

The ministry has also promised to introduce a system that allows more youths to be hired to work in shifts.

The system has been tried in Huduma centres, where longer working hours were introduced to facilitate the filing of Kenya Revenue Authority tax returns.

Renewable contracts

The ministry is also looking to implement renewable contract terms to reduce cases of civil servants working into their old age before they retire.

According to the CAS, lack of laws to safeguard the interests of the youth, especially in securing employment, has been a major impediment in hiring a younger workforce.

She appealed to Parliament to enact laws to ensure that the youth was not barred from senior public service jobs.

“Without legislation, there is nothing we can do. Legislators should work on that,” she said..

The youths said they were being edged out of public appointments by people who were past retirement age.