Panic grips Nandi after staff reduction recommendation
By Barry Silah, August 16, 2024Panic has gripped employees of Nandi county government after a human resource audit recommended the down-sizing of staff to slash the wage bill.
A Public Service Commission human resource audit report handed over to Governor Stephen Sang in Kapsabet yesterday exposed several loopholes and made far reaching recommendations among them to cut down its wage bill to a manageable levels.
Targeted in the PSC report are county government workers earning salaries outside the government Integrated Payroll and personal Data system (IPPD) and have been receiving their pay through other means.
PSC chairman Antony Muchiri called for urgent implementation of the report’s recommendations to improve service delivery to residents.
Nandi county, just like the other 46 counties across Kenya, lacks basic structures of human resource hence poor delivery of services to residents, Muchiri charged.
Praising the county leadership for the bold move to confront the ballooning wage bill, the PSC chairman stressed the need to ensure that all the counties workforce need to establish organizational structures to ensure proper placement of the staff. The commission has recommended disciplinary action against county officers culpable in the manipulation of the staff payroll where in some circumstances some workers have been put on huge salaries yet they lack the requisite qualification.
“There have been cases of manipulation of terms and conditions of service of certain workers, earning so high yet have no qualifications and others put illegally on permanent terms without the approval of the board,” the commission report noted.
Nandi County is one of the counties with the highest wage bill of 58 percent in which governor Sang revealed that he was ready to confront it to have more resources for development.
“I decided to bite the bullet in order to have more development activities that will change the livelihoods of the people than salaries hence the reason I invited PSC for the human resource Audit exercise,” Sang explained. He vowed to implement the report in full asking Nandi county assembly to provide a way forward ones it is tabled.
“I’m going to convene a county executive committee members sitting next week for adoption and will forward it to the assembly for a way forward on its implementation,” governor Sang noted.