Azimio opposes State's contract hiring plan

Public Service Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya has criticized the government’s plan to revoke permanent and pensionable employment terms among public servants, replacing them with contracts.

The coalition, led by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, has termed the move “erratic,” warning that it threatens to destabilize the public service.

National Assembly Minority Leader Opiyo Wandayi faulted the move as counterproductive in the government’s quest to cut the wage bill, even as they called out the Kenya Kwanza government’s huge expenditures.

“It is our position that changing the employment terms from permanent and pensionable to contract as a cost-saving measure is not supported by any scientific or factual economic data and is just one of the many erratic policy pronouncements the regime has been known for,” said the Ugunja Member of Parliament in a statement, warning that the opposition coalition would support legal suits against the move.

“In any event, an employer cannot just change an employee’s terms of service midway or at a whim. Most, if not all, public servants are in public service due to the ‘permanence’ of their terms of service. Contractual terms of service do not offer this,” Wandayi added.

His statement is in response to a plan announced by Public Service Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria to quash permanent and pensionable employment terms.

Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (Kuco) Chairperson Peterson Wachira described Kuria’s plans as empty threats, stating that such a shift was beyond the CS’s mandate.

“The conversion of permanent staff into contract is untenable under prevailing labour laws. The only recognized and legitimate way to engage civil servants, who are not state officers, is on a permanent and pensionable basis. In fact, the Public Service Act states that a civil servant can only be engaged through a contract if they do not qualify to be engaged in any other way, which in this case means permanent and pensionable,” said Wachira.

Amend the law

The Kuco boss said such a move would require an amendment of the law. “The CS should also understand that the determination of terms is beyond him. It is a role of the Public Service Commission and so it is not something he can do. Maybe he doesn’t understand what he is suggesting,” he added.

The move came amid the ongoing doctors’ strike, with the government hopeful that contractual terms would help prevent future strikes. The doctors’ union has viewed the measure as an attempt to intimidate them into going back to work.

“As a party, we regard public service as the foundation of nation-building and national development. We will take all steps to defend and protect the integrity of the public service to ensure it attracts and retains men and women of quality and integrity. We will, therefore, fight this new policy proposal in courts and all other avenues should the government decide to proceed with it,” said Wandayi.

He further accused the government of being the culprit in regards to the ballooning wage bill, pointing out efforts to re-establish the Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) positions that also come with cost implications to the taxpayer.

“There is no justification whatsoever for this drastic policy change in the name of cutting costs at a time when the government is fighting tooth and nail to hire political hatchet men and women in the names of CASs with hefty salaries and related perks. Are these really the hustlers the Kenya Kwanza government swore to empower and uplift during their campaigns?” posed Wandayi.

“Civil servants must not be the scapegoat for the rising wage bill while the government gobbles up billions of shillings every month in unnecessary and unproductive local and foreign travels,” he went on, enumerating the added costs that would accompany the said transition into contractual employment.

Such include the payment of pensions for all workers, which Wandayi argued the State could not afford and the inevitable costly legal battle against the policy.

“The government will also have to convince the country and the workers that in implementing the changes, it will have complied with the provisions of the Employment Act, international labour conventions and all relevant labour laws. We are convinced the regime has not thought through this.

“The government will also have to convince the country that the changes it intends to introduce have worked in other jurisdictions and produced desired results. We believe the planned changes will usher the civil service into a period of uncertainty and instability that the country does not need in these troubled times,” Azimio’s leader in the National Assembly added.

He urged the government to cut costs by stopping the duplication of county roles and non-essential expenditures, such as hiring CASs, sealing corruption loopholes and reducing the size of the government.

Wandayi further called on the government to cut non-essential domestic and foreign travel and freeze ministerial out-of-station allowances.

“The public service is older than this regime. It will also outlive this regime. We will not allow it to be used as a scapegoat for the failures of the regime,” he stated.