Retrenchment is in the offing in the Civil Service, despite government assurances that the ongoing audit process and biometric registration will not result in job cuts.
It was reliably established that the Government will start the retrenchment of an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 employees next month, once the ongoing Capacity Assessment and Rationalization of the Public Service Programme is finalized. The exercise is going on at both the national governmentand county levels.
There are about 260,000 civil servants, who earned a total of Sh77.1 billion last year, becoming the second-largest component of public wages after the Sh107 billion paid to teachers.
According to the timeliness guiding the exercise, the government will begin the purge to get rid of redundant employees on its payroll starting in October, even as it seeks to eliminate ghost workers.
But last month Public Service Commission chairperson Margaret Kobia said the aim of the rationalization exercise was not to lay off workers, but only to improve efficiency both at the national and county levels.
“The Government has no plans of retrenching anyone and no civil servant should be worried over the rationalization programme,” she said after retrenchment fears gripped the Civil Service.
“We are not planning to retrench anyone, but if a civil servant is found to be underperforming he will eventually lose his job,” she said.
However, documents show that government plans to send away workers in its service who do not meet the ongoing assessment criteria, albeit with attractive packages to avert complaints and litigation.
In her budget proposals before the Parliamentary Budget and Appropriations committee in March, Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru had asked to be allocated Sh2 billion to retrench excess workers in the Civil Service.
Targeted are civil servants with vague or without any training in their current positions or those whose skills do not match government plans. Others are officers performing jobs with no economic impact or contribution in driving Vision 2030.
The assessment will be conducted against set key performance indicators in line with the objective of efficient and effective Civil Service delivery.
An assessment form prepared by Ernst and Young,the consultant hired to undertake the CARPS, details the procedures and categorizes the resources available.
The exercise will look at the workload in each government department and establish the employees available against the standard of staff required to perform a given task.
To target redundancy and absenteeism, the consultant will also measure and calculate the output for each civil servant against the monthly available required working hours.
The Government plans to get rid of employees whose skills are no longer required or those categorized as non-skilled but performing tasks requiring special competencies.
Although the Government has previously restated that the ongoing staff audit does not seek to retrench excessive staff, a detailed action plan paints a grim picture for thousands of affected civil servants.
Under the programme, the Government will ask some of the employees whose skills are particularly redundant to retire voluntarily from the Civil Service with the promise of a golden handshake.
In case legal proceedings emanate from the staff rationalization, the Government plans to address the complaints and conclude the litigation issues by early December, according to the timeliness given.
Source: The Star
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