NAIROBI, KENYA: The pay of junior police officers whose salaries were drastically reduced in March has been reinstated.
Some officers who logged into the Government’s human resource online portal said their April payslips show they would get higher salaries.
“We have seen the payslips and they indicate we will get more cash. It is the reimbursement of the money they took away from the graduates and the disabled,” said one of them.
The officers affected by the pay cuts were those who had been rewarded with higher salaries after acquiring university degrees. Others had been exempted from paying taxes because of disabilities. The Kenya Revenue Authority exempts the disabled from heavy taxation.
The decision to reduce the salaries was prompted by an audit conducted by the National Police Service Commission that revealed that some graduate officers had colluded with some of their seniors to get higher pay.
The officers took advantage of a gap in their employment terms that allowed graduates to earn higher salaries than colleagues with lower academic qualifications.
This triggered a rush for higher qualifications as officers who joined the service on the strength of a secondary school certificate sought university degrees.
After the pay cut, officers with loans and mortgages were left with no income.
