The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has announced efforts to increase productivity by civil servants as a way of controlling the ballooning public sector wage bill. Among the measures SRC plans to implement are job evaluations, scrapping of allowances and introduction of performance contracts for all civil servants.

According to the Commission, which has been tasked with the responsibility to inquire into and determine the salaries and remuneration to be paid to State officers and other public officers, plans are underway to ensure that every worker is paid according to his or her performance. (This the Kenya Forum will believe when we see it!)

CIVIL SERVICE UNPRODUCTIVE

There is minimal productivity in the vast public service yet civil servants continue to earn big. Ironically, it takes about three civil servants to do work which can be comfortably done by just one person. Perhaps this explains why parastatal/government employees emerged top of Kenyan workers who were most satisfied with their employment in a recent survey. The high satisfaction in the workplace among the employees has been attributed to better terms, less work load and flexible working hours among others.

PERFORMANCE CONTRACTS

SRC Commissioner Isaiah Kubai, who was speaking at Chuka University during a wage bill public forum over the weekend, announced that despite an anticipated resistance from civil servants, the Commission has a plan to administer performance contracts to every public worker to ensure that maximum productivity is achieved.

“The performance contracts will ensure people are paid according to the production they achieve in their various duties,” he said adding that they would also sustain the job evaluation and start a wage policy to achieve sustainable wage levels as a lasting solution to the wage bill crisis. These will be enforced after public hearings and a national conference on the wage bill next month.

SUCCESS IN OTHER COUNTRIES

In a previous article by the Kenya Forum entitled KENYA’S SOARING WAGE BILL NEEDS BETTER APPROACH THAN JUST SALARY CUTBACKS, we emphasized the importance of re-enforcing performance contracts in the civil service as a lasting solution to tame the wage bill.

Performance contracting has been found to be quite successful in countries such as France, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, South Korea, Ghana and a complete implementation of the same in Kenya is long overdue.