Alarm as civil servants in counties miss pay

By STANDARD TEAM

Kenya: A showdown looms between civil servants and county czars over payment of salaries.

The Standard has established that a number of employees transferred from the national payroll to counties are yet to be paid their January dues.

In the health sector, doctors and nurses say some of their allowances have been slashed.

In what points to an uneasy working relationship with their new paymasters, the health workers have already warned of industrial action over non-payment of allowances they used to receive.

Veterinary doctors and their para-veterinary counterparts are also protesting over slashed health risk allowances since county governments took over their remuneration.

Initially, the practitioners got a monthly risk allowance of Sh5,000. However, this is no more as counties have taken over the salary payments.

Even more worrying is the revelation that some employees have been rejected by counties they were transferred to – literally leaving them hanging by their fingernails.

Some county officials The Standard spoke to defended the rejection, saying the affected officers had their names missing from a list submitted to their devolved units.

In Kisumu County, the fate of 150 employees is not known after the county government rejected them.

“We had a few challenges with people serving in other counties having their names appear on our list but we have withheld their pay until an explanation is given,” County Secretary Humphrey Nakitari said.

He said the county’s chief officers had been mandated to harmonise the list of employees to ensure that the issues of ghost workers was dealt with.

In Tharaka Nithi County, employees are a worried lot as they are yet to receive their January salaries. Speaking to The Standard, nurses, doctors and agricultural extension officers said they were yet to receive their salaries from the county government.

Workers’ allowances

County Executive for Finance Eliud Mate said they had not paid the workers but blamed the situation on the National Treasury, which had not included the health workers’ allowances in their disbursement.

“I went to the Treasury offices on Friday to find out what was going on and why they had not sent full amounts to our accounts and they said they would clear it up soon,” Mr Mate said.

He added that the county government did not want to pay the workers half the amount because the employees might have thought the county had slashed their pay.

“We decided to hold back on paying wages without allowances until Treasury sorts out the situation,” Mate explained.

In Nyeri County, doctors and nurses voiced their concern over the disparity in the wages that the county government is paying them and what they used to earn at the national level.

Even more confusing is the fact that only half the number of nurses transferred had been paid by yesterday.

Those who had been paid, however, said their risk and uniform allowances had been slashed. According to the nurses, the risk allowance is usually Sh3,850 while uniform allowance is Sh50,000 annually.

Doctors in the county confirmed they had been paid less the non-practising allowance they had wanted introduced. In the agricultural sector, veterinary officers said they were paid but the risk allowance was not included.

In what spells doom for staff seconded to the counties, Public Service Commission (PSC) chairperson Margaret Kobia two weeks ago urged public officers in the devolved services of health and agriculture to apply for jobs advertised by the counties.

Addressing a summit of governors in Naivasha, Ms Kobia said there was no guarantee that the seconded staff would be retained on the national payroll should the counties fail to absorb them in the ongoing staff rationalisation exercise.

“What should be made clear to the staff seconded to the counties is that they should apply for jobs in the regional governments as we do not have positions for them once the counties release them,” Kobia said.

60,000 employees

This will come as a bombshell to the over 60,000 employees seconded to the 47 counties since devolved governments took effect in April.

The latest developments have set the stage for a duel between counties and the public service.

Kenya Animal Health Practitioners Union chair Miheso Mulembani told The Standard that counties had started on a wrong footing and that their indifference towards seconded employees would affect service delivery in the counties.

“Counties have got it all wrong by slashing our allowances,” Mulembani said, adding that the scrapping of risk allowances, for instance, would kill the little morale doctors had for working in high risk environments.

Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi Mohammed, however, attributed the payroll hitch to “teething problems of a new system”.

“Counties have begun paying their workforce but this might take some time depending on individual counties,” Abdullahi, who is also the Governors’ Council Finance Committee chairman, said.

Ghost workers

Allaying fears of possible job losses, James Ongwae, chairman of the Human Resource Committee of the Governor’s Council, said the issue of ghost workers remains a challenge.

Council Chairman Isaac Ruto dismissed reports of any stand-off between counties and transferred employees, saying counties began paying them even before the national payroll was devolved.

“We have been paying staff seconded to counties by sending the money to the national government. What has changed now is that counties will handle the payroll at the county level,” Mr Ongwae said.

—Reporting by JEVANS NYABIAGE, PEACELOISE MBAE, LYDIAH NYAWIRA, KEVINE OMOLLO, SAMMY JAKAA, ROSELYN OBALA