Mwangaza, county board clash over staff recruitment

Meru Governor Kawira Mwangaza after separate meetings with the cabinet and a section of MCAs at her official residence, on January 10, 2025. [Phares Mutembei, Standard]

Meru Governor Kawira Mwangaza has opposed planned recruitment of hundreds of workers by the County Public Service Board.

On January 8, the board advertised vacancies in the Health, Education, Agriculture, Water and other departments.

Mwangaza and County Secretary Kiambi Atheru however, opposed the recruitment of new staff citing the ballooning public wage bill.

However, the Virginia Miriti-led board said there was need to fill various positions in critical departments.

Miriti and other board members said they are determined to proceed with the recruitment to  relieve overworked staff, including in the Health department, which she said was critically understaffed, despite the Executive’s resistance.

She asked interested candidates to continue applying for the advertised jobs, despite the Executive’s order to the board to cancel the recruitment process.

Miriti said whereas the recommended doctor-to-patient ratio was 1; 1,000, one doctor in Meru was currently attending to 11,761 patients.

And while the nurse-to-patient ratio should be 1;400, a nurse in Meru takes care of 1,512 patients.

“When a single nurse is supposed to do four times the work, you could imagine how many deaths could be happening in Meru,” Miriti said.

She argued that they were an independent agency legally mandated to recruit staff and the Meru County Assembly had allocated (Sh100m) for the recruitment of health staff in the 2024-2025 budget.

But Governor Mwangaza said they were acting on the directive of the Controller of Budget not to hire more staff because the wage bill was above the legal threshold.

She said whereas the wage bill should be at 35 per cent Meru’s had hit 40.3 per cent.

Mwangaza revealed that the executive was planning to replace staff who had exited from service for various reasons.

“We will not do new hiring. We will just replace because CoB directed we should not recruit new staff,” she said.

The governor said the recruitment of staff will only happen if the national government allocates more funds or her administration collects more own source revenue.

Dr Atheru said they were keen to implement the CoB order.

“There is no budget for your (CPSB’s) proposed employment. Please stop the same as we struggle to bring down the county’s wage bill, which is almost half of our revenue, at the expense of the much needed development by the people of Meru," he said in a letter addressed to the board.