Let Salaries and Remuneration Commission roll out measures to cut the huge wage bill

The Pumwani maternity hospital in Nairobi, has for the longest time been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Given the record of complaints, it is not in doubt that new born babies at the hospital have either disappeared or been swapped.

Things came to a head in January when a mother noticed she getting a raw deal and took necessary steps that not only proved the dead twins she was handed as her own did not match her DNA, but were not even twins as claimed.

When the matter, which is now under the Senate Health Committee hit the limelight, nurses at the hospital went up in arms to profess their innocence and claimed their reputation was being deliberately mutilated. Consequently, they opted to go on a slowdown to show indignation while at the same time demanding enhanced security at the hospital and hiring of more nurses. This month, Christian Auma delivered a baby outside the hospital gates because the unconcerned nurses could not be moved by her plight. Two expectant women are also said to have died unattended at the maternity hospital since the go slow began.

The Nairobi County Government should not just stop at suspending striking nurses at Pumwani maternity, it should charge them with criminal negligence as well. The teaching and practice of medics is basically to save lives. When medics deliberately turn callous, they deserve no sympathy.

It is instructive that even the Kenya National Union of Nurses calls Pumwani an unsafe slaughterhouse and advices pregnant women to seek help elsewhere. In the same breath in which the union condemned goings on at the hospital, they took a swipe at the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) for putting a two year freeze on salary increments until job evaluations are concluded. Regrettably, the nurses union, like our parliamentarians, believes the SRC has no business determining their pay.

In retrospect, a task force set up to review modalities of saving the government money, tabled its report in Parliament last week. The report titled ‘Socio-Economic Audit of the Constitution’ suggested among a raft of measures, retrenchment of at least 60,000 civil servants and a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament and Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) by half the current numbers.

According to the report, the National Government wage bill stands at Sh281 billion while that of county governments stands at Sh71.2 billion. MPs are reputed to earn three times what their counterparts in other African countries whose economies are doing much better than ours, earn. The extravagance that our legislators are given to is legendary and any attempts to regulate their salaries have been met with resistance before.

The SRC’s proposals are bound to rub legislators the wrong way. Already, MPs are grumbling following recommendations that their per diem be cut down to Sh64,000; an amount they view as too little to finance their acquired expensive lifestyles.

In the two years of devolution, it has been observable that the heavy burden of sustaining a large number of MCAs is one the tax payer can safely dispense with. Reports from the Controller of Budget, Auditor General and the Commission for Revenue Allocation point to a level of wastage by this category of leaders that can only impoverish the tax payer.

They have not only been known to derive more pleasure from foreign junkets on the pretext of benchmarking, they have displayed an unhealthy fascination with sitting allowances and any other perks they can lay their hands on in an effort to feather their nests while the going is still good.

Similarly, the National Treasury would be a lot healthier with half the number of MPs we have today.