Kenyan taxpayers may have to pay a staggering Sh185 billion to compensate early retirees in the public sector, in a planned staff rationalisation that is already running a year behind schedule.
The huge cost is the price for past mistakes committed in massive recruitment by the national and county governments who are now stuck with a bloated workforce.
Prior estimates showed annual savings of Sh32.7 billion would be realised from the programme that should have been completed by last December.
Most of the workers targeted have attained the minimum retirement age of 50, significantly reducing their productivity but the State has found it too expensive to let go.
But the intended monetary savings have been foregone with the inability to execute the cuts, which would inadvertently have opened up new opportunities for fresh graduates.
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Government policy
Compounded by a Government policy freezing employment unless for critical services such as healthcare, the face of public sector workforce is grey-haired.
Public Service Commission has acknowledged that holding on to the senior employees beyond the retirement age was creating a huge problem in succession.
In a report released earlier in February, PSC said there were succession gaps at the top levels of public offices which led to retention of staff beyond the mandatory retirement age of 60 years to provide more time to mentor successors.
“However, it has been noted that at the end of the extension period, very little preparation of ‘would-be successors’ takes place,” reads the report in part.
Kenya raised the mandatory retirement age in the public service by five to 60 years hoping that the time would be enough to establish a pension scheme.
But the proposed scheme was met with resistance by intended beneficiaries who viewed their deductions from their pay to saving for retirement as a pay cut.
The result was an ageing workforce, where three out of every five were above 40 years old in 2015, and an even bigger retirement bill to be settled.
Among county governments, the problem of a bloated workforce was complicated five years ago at the advent of devolution.
County managers recruited heavily for skills they felt were missing among the inherited workers, quickly increasing staff numbers as the legal environment had made it difficult to lay off staff.
