Probe claims of meddling in KRA hiring exercise

 

The Senate Committee on National Cohesion, Equal Opportunities and Regional Integration has faulted the recruitment exercise of Revenue Service Assistants (RSA) at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). From the 1,061 positions advertised, two ethnic communities, the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu took 788 slots, representing 57 per cent of the total.

The remaining 43 per cent was shared among other big Kenyan tribes. This clearly violates constitutional and other legal stipulations regarding the equitable share of national resources. The National Cohesion Integration Act 2008 bars any single Kenyan community from holding more than 33.3 per cent of jobs in any public institution. 

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua might have made reference to the government as a shareholding company in jest, but happenings in government seem to reinforce the belief that indeed, the Kenya Kwanza government has its shareholders to the detriment of anybody else outside that circle. 

It is not by accident, therefore, that the majority of those hired by KRA as RSAs come from the president and deputy president’s ethnic backgrounds. This speaks volumes about endemic political patronage that is the mother of mediocrity prevalent in the public service.

The requirement for hiring the RSAs was a D+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, which makes it difficult to believe that despite educational inequalities in schools, other Kenyan tribes could not produce qualified candidates.

Kenya belongs to all 46 ethnic communities, hence, we should not normalise tribalism and nepotism in recruitment. In the hiring of teachers last year, for example, some politicians took it upon themselves to warn ‘outsiders’ in their constituencies not to bother applying.

That is unfortunate since it promotes the very vice that we seek to run away from in our quest to become a cohesive country. Politicians must be stopped from meddling in recruitment, and one way of doing so is for the culprits to be named, shamed and prosecuted.