SRC boss Mengich takes stock of job as tenure nears end
By Print, August 30, 2024
Outgoing Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) chairperson Lyn Mengich has taken stock of her six-year tenure as her exit and three other commissioners draws near.
Mengich revealed the battles she has been fighting at the helm of SRC in her attempt to harmonise salaries and to ensure that remuneration paid to civil servants is commensurate with productivity in the jobs they do.
It has not been a walk in the park for the career human resource manager who has endured arm-twisting by some government officials forcing their way to hike their salaries through unwarranted allowances.
“Whenever anyone (public officials) says, this is my pay, it is important to ask, is that basic or gross pay? And you will be surprised always that there is a lot that has not been said. Because allowances have been ignored. On average civil servants get 48 per cent of their basic salaries as allowances but it can go up to 200 per cent,” she emphasized.
Mengich added: “When we talk about total public wage bill, that also means all the basic salaries, allowances, and any other financial obligations that are related to employment, meaning that it also includes both remunerative and facilitative allowances. So that entails the entire wage bill which should not exceed 35 per cent of the total revenue generated in the country.”
During her tenure, SRC attained a progressive drop in the total public wage bill to the total ordinary revenue ratio from 51.54 per cent in the financial year 2017/2018 to 46.64 per cent in the financial year 2022/2023. It is projected to decline further to 39.22 per cent in the financial year 2023/2024.
However, the bloated wage bill persists as it rose from Sh785 billion in the financial year 2017/2018 to Sh1.035 trillion in the financial year 2021/2022, and is projected to grow further to Sh1.17 trillion in the financial year 2023/2024.
“While the increase in the public wage bill is largely attributed to an increase in employee numbers in the education, health and security sectors, the downward trend is attributed to strategic interventions by SRC in collaboration with other stakeholders,” she said.
In 2019, the commission abolished 247 different allowances paid to public officers that accounted for 48 per cent of the total wage bill, saving the taxpayer Sh11.2 billion annually. According to Mengich, between financial years 2020/2021 and 2023/2024, SRC received requests for advice involving salary reviews and collective bargaining negotiations amounting to Sh150.89 billion.