Three-year contracts are just another knee-jerk solution to ballooning public wage bill

Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) commissioner, John Monyoncho giving the highlight of Public Wage Bill Management Study Report during its launch on June 18, 2019 in Nairobi. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NMG 

In Summary

• The PSC fat cats should go back to the drawing board and give us an intelligent plan that does not penalise ordinary civil servants for the insatiable greed and wastage of state officials and politicians.

By TEE NGUGI
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After thinking long and hard about what to do with the
runaway public wage bill, Kenya’s Public Service Commission has proposed a new policy that will end the long-standing permanent and pensionable employment scheme.

From July 1, hiring will be done on a three-year contract basis. Announcing the new policy, Stephen Kirogo, chairman of the PSC, said “… the public service is bloated, lethargic and unproductive.” Then, getting inspired by his own words, he concluded, “Nothing short of a brutal approach will work…”

I visualise the man resuming his seat with an air of both satisfaction and condescension in the knowledge that his proposition would revolutionise the public service and solve the vexing problem of an unsustainable public wage bill. He is wrong on both accounts.

His proposal falls within a tradition in Kenya, and Africa by extension, where officials give expedient, knee-jerk solutions to address the symptoms of a problem.

Getting to the heart of the problem demands courage because it would mean challenging behaviour, culture and mentality deeply embedded in Kenya’s body politic.

A few years ago, the country was confronted by a new form of terrorism. High school students were running amok, setting fire to their own schools.

In some cases, students, asleep in the dormitories, lost their lives. Buildings, desks, beds, learning materials were destroyed. In addition, there was the intangible cost of disruption to the school calendar.

Players in the education sector succumbed to mass hysteria. Bring back corporal punishment, they thundered.

We have lost our African culture, said others, scratching their beards thoughtfully. Others, borrowing a leaf from pan-African ideologues, blamed Western education models for the indiscipline and proposed conceptualising education in the context of African culture.

Then, the minister of education was Professor Jacob Kaimenyi. The assumption was that the professor would employ logic when everyone else was illogical.

He would be calm in the midst of hysteria. He would privilege research over emotional knee-jerk proposals. He would provide visionary solutions, not expedient short-term answers.

Eventually, the Ministry of Education pronounced itself on the crisis. The problem, the officials said, was caused by mock exams, mid-term breaks, visiting days, and holiday tuition.

To link these four things to burning schools required a wild and reckless leap of faith. Like the PSC approach to public wages, the ministry had refused to instigate an uncomfortable national conversation, and instead opted for reckless, expedient and short-term solutions.

Mock exams are, in fact, good preparation, because they simulate the physical and psychological conditions of the real exam.

Mid-term breaks and visiting days are a psychosocial safety valve for release of all kinds of anxieties. Holiday tuition in moderation helps children struggling in school to catch up.

The ministry officials refused to debate a national culture of short-cuts to wealth, and the use of violence to solve disputes.

The wealthiest people in society were those who had taken short-cuts. The students had learnt from political leaders that disputes were solved through violence. They had seen ethnic clashes during every election cycle. They had seen assassination of political opponents, etc.

The unsustainable public wage bill, too, is a societal problem. Politicians and other state officials see themselves as an aristocracy entitled to vast sums of public money.

In a poor country such as Kenya, our legislators are the highest paid in the world. In addition, they get fuel and sitting allowances, not to mention fabled per-diems on their frequent joy rides around the world. So, too, do employees of state commissions and parastatals, judges, military chiefs, etc.

The presidential entourage in and outside of the country is comically excessive. The deputy president squanders scarce resources on his endless campaign trips around the country.

The Senate, a redundant entity which should be scrapped, is one long gravy train. Ghost workers at national and county levels continue to receive salaries and allowances. Last week, this column highlighted the criminal pension benefits paid to two former presidents.

The PSC proposal has hidden costs. People on contract are forever looking for jobs elsewhere. Recruitment to replace those whose contracts have ended will be wasteful.

Bosses will now have an unhealthy say on whose contract gets renewed. Favouritism and sexual harassment will become rife. And all this trouble without solving the public wage bill problem.

The PSC fat cats should go back to the drawing board and give us an intelligent plan that does not penalise ordinary civil servants for the insatiable greed and wastage of state officials and politicians.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.