EDITORIAL: Serem, now cut waste in mid-cadre public service

SALARIES AND REMUNERATION COMMISSION CHAIRPERSON SARAH SEREM. FILE PHOTO | NMG   

Summary

• To be sure, these high salaries had elevated the Kenyan MPs to the position of the highest paid politicians in the world – when measured against the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
• By this measure alone, countries that are much richer than Kenya are paying politicians substantially lower salaries, making them more equal and hence less divided socially and economically.
• This is the reason the SRC’s quest to save some Sh8.8 billion in wage-related recurrent expenditure is spot on.

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission’s (SRC) decision to cut senior State officers’ salaries, though belated, is one that has the backing of the Kenyan public.

The fact is that these officials should not have been awarded the huge salaries in the first place. No one could rationally argue that they have the right to earn such money in a country where nearly half the population wallows in poverty.

To be sure, these high salaries had elevated the Kenyan MPs to the position of the highest paid politicians in the world – when measured against the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

By this measure alone, countries that are much richer than Kenya are paying politicians substantially lower salaries, making them more equal and hence less divided socially and economically.

This is the reason the SRC’s quest to save some Sh8.8 billion in wage-related recurrent expenditure is spot on.

After all, such are the cost cutting measures that both sides of the political divide will have to undertake in order to find money for the mega projects they have promised voters.

Plans to spend more on key areas such as education and health mean there will be greater need to rationalise and give priority to spending regardless of who gets into power.

Our considered view is, however, that the SRC must move its cost-cutting effort beyond holders of high public profile to the middle cadre of public service where thousands are taking home millions of shillings every year in travel, meeting and other frivolous allowances.

It is common knowledge that many earn stipends that are not even formally recognised as allowances but as work facilitation expenditures – even for attending functions that are part of their work.

It is to be hoped that the SRC will not back down this time round should the MPs insist on the old pay scales for State officers. If the MPs are left out then there will be no morally defensible reason for demanding wage cuts elsewhere.