Huge income disparities will fuel industrial unrest

In a ruling made by Employment and Labour Relations Judge Nduma Nderi last week, teachers were awarded a handsome pay raise, handing the unions a major victory in their fight with the government over salaries. It was a reprieve for teachers who have long been taken for a ride by successive governments even as pay for other public officers was increased.

Unsurprisingly, the court’s decision drew protests from the government, with Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi almost immediately announcing he would appeal. “We will not agree to be forced to pay what we do not have,” said Prof Kaimenyi before the parliamentary committee on Education.

This tired line from the government is a case of double standards.

How come we can afford to pay MPs and a few civil servants salaries that their counterparts in developed countries could only dream of while finding no money to pay our teachers and doctors reasonably?

When a country with an economy whose size ranks a lowly 84th in the world manages to pay its MPs at a rate that is second best in the world while at the same time severely underpaying its teachers, such a country sets itself up for the kind of strikes and clamour for more pay we continue to witness.

The sad fact is that apart from politicians and senior government employees, in no profession do our wages compare with the best paid in the world. Something is clearly amiss.

A study by the UK-based Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows our most honourable Members of Parliament are the second best paid in the world. Only Nigeria, which holds the gold standard when it comes to MPs salaries, pays more.

In fact, according to the report, four out of five of the highest paid MPs in the world are African, with the top five being Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Indonesia and South Africa. For comparison when it comes to teachers pay, there is a much closer relationship between our economic strength and their salaries. Unlike MPs, the top 20 best paid teachers are in developed countries with high human development indexes. No African country appears on the highest paid teachers list.

If we are not an economic powerhouse, its beyond comprehension how some people continue to act and pretend as if we are. We should in my opinion modestly live within our means instead of letting a few pretend that we have the resources to support the largesse we see around. It is made even more tragic by the fact that Kenya has an embarrassing difference between the highest and lowest paid worker.

A 2013 report showed that the highest paid cadre in the civil service earns almost 100 times more than the lowest. The report, compiled by the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), recommends the need to compress civil service wages by reducing the difference between the highest and lowest paid.

According to the report, Kenya’s wage compression ratio (the difference between the highest and lowest paid) is very high compared to the other countries in the region. While Kenya pays some privileged civil servants 98 times more than their lowest paid counterparts, the regional ratio is only about 20 times while in most developed countries the difference between the highest and lowest paid civil servant is less than 10 times.

As long as there are people who continue to receive extravagant salaries courtesy of the taxpayer, there will continue to be agitation by those who rightly feel that they are also entitled to similar perks. The Salaries and Remuneration Commission was meant to address the imbalances in pay, but let us face it, the commission lacks the power, legal authority and perhaps the vision to radically slash salaries across the board.