Serem warns of looming crisis as public service ghost workers bleed coffers

SRC Chair Sarah Serem (right) shares a light moment with Catherine Musakali (left), Institute of Certified Public Secretaries of Kenya, and ICPSK vice chair Pius Nduatih at the governance forum. [PHOTO: FELX KAVII/STANDARD]

By JAMES ANYANZWA

Taxpayers are struggling to sustain over 300,000 ghost workers in the civil service as public sector wage bill spirals out of control.                                                             

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) estimates that more than a half of the people in the public service do not exist and cleaning up the public payroll could significantly reduce the wage bill.

This comes barely a month after President Uhuru Kenyatta revealed that the country could be losing about Sh1.8 billion annually through payment of salaries to ghost workers.Public sector wage bill is currently estimated at Sh475 billion and is projected to hit Sh500 billion in the 2014/2015 financial year.

In the 2012/2013 financial year the total amount paid to civil servants in salaries and wages stood at Sh458 billion.Kenya has 700,000 public sector employees in its books.SRC Chairperson Sarah Serem said about a half of the total workforce in the public sector does not exist.

“We have 700,000 employees in the public sector and there is an indication that possibly a half of it or a quarter of it are ghost workers,” Serem told a forum of accountants in Nairobi on Wednesday.

Describing the soaring wage bill as ‘unsustainable’ and nearing a crisis point, she pointed out that job evaluation exercise both at the county and national level would help identify ghost workers. Indeed the sacking of tens of thousands of civil servants could be in offing with more players including donor community asking the government to get rid of excess workers to contain the increasing public sector wage bill.

 Already Devolution and Planning ministry is looking for a private sector firm to help rationalise the public sector work force within national and county governments.

Optimal number

Among the key tasks that the private sector consultant will be charged with include establishing the optimal number of workers within the government.

Serem said a huge wage bill that is not commensurate with productivity is a threat to sustainable government expenditure and eats into resources that would otherwise be used for development.

“We want to bring sanity in remuneration by linking it to productivity,” said Serem. She noted that the rising public sector wage bill has been increased by the cost of devolution.

A number of economists feel that private investments in the economy stand the risk of weakening owing to the swelling domestic debt as the Government borrows to pay wages for civil servants.

“Over-borrowing from the domestic market is not healthy to the economy because its crowds out the private sector and affects investments,” said Samuel Nyandemo, a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi’s School of Economics.