How fear of debt bred crooked millionaires in civil service

Daniel Moi, right, alongside PS in the president's office, Geoffrey Kariithi, holding table, Minister of State Mr Koinange and Charles Njonjo, watch as President Jomo Kenyatta announces his cabinet in November 1974. [File, Standard]

From the beginning, it was a cardinal sin for a civil servant to be broke. This was the cardinal gospel authored and spread by pioneers of modern Kenya. They wanted Africans who replaced Patels and Smiths in the civil service to be men of means.

This is why in 1967, the first African head of Civil service, Geoffrey Kariithi, warned the civil servants who had just been recruited in the spirit of Africanisation not to embarrass their new government.

“…usually, chronic indebtedness is due to bad management and an inability to adjust your way of life to the realities of your position. A civil servant in bad debt is a bad risk and the absence of a sense of proportion in judgment which leads to those debts also shows him as unfit for responsibilities of civil service,” he counselled.

Civil servants incapable of planning their finances, the government warned, would be replaced by students graduating from schools and colleges.

At the time, the government was nurturing its nascent civil service, a total of 4,000 young Kenyans had just finished their secondary school education. Of this number, 850 had furthered their education while a further 700 had chosen to be teachers while 1,450 had secured jobs in various public institutions. 

The projections were that the number of form four leavers would ultimately rise to 14,500 in 1970.

The nature of civil service work demands that many take decisions or deal with matters which personally affect members of the public or their colleagues in government.

Sometimes, this petty power over others, Kariithi warned, had a corrupting effect on some people who adopted an attitude that they were dispensing favours and privileges at their discretion.

That is why the pioneer chief of public service warned them that there were plenty of people who were ready to replace public servants who could not live up to the calling of their public duty.

 If the former chief of civil service were to rise from the grave again, he would be horrified to learn that some occupants of public offices today have become millionaires by peddling power and influence emanating from their offices.

That is why the Asset and Recovery Authority has fully occupied chasing and seizing the property of public servants who have become overnight millionaires and had wealth whose source they could not account for.

The same spirit pervades elective offices where individuals are currently engaged in fierce battles where they are burning millions in campaigns so that they can access public offices where they hope to recover their expenses.

After close to 60 years of independence, the country’s public service is about to hit the one million mark as there are over 923,000 public servants, who are paid a collective total of Sh760 billion every year. The costs are even more if the amount pilfered from public coffers is factored in.