Tough Times Ahead For Civil Servants As Government Plans To Slash Wage Bill
Civil servants are going to face tough times in the coming days amid plans to tame wage bill.
President William Ruto’s government has announced to reduce ballooning wage bill to 35 per cent by 2028, pointing out to radical pay cuts awaiting public servants.
“The national government has committed to reduce their wage bill to 35 per cent in line with the Public Finance Management Act, 2012 by 2028,” the state announced.
The announcement is contained in the national and county governments coordinating summit joined communiqué signed by Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and Council of Governors chairperson Anne Waiguru.
The communiqué follows a meeting during National and County Governments Summit that brought together the President, his deputy and all the governors held at state house recently.
The summit also directed the county government to reduce their wage bill in line with the PFM Act.
This implies that national and county governments are likely to slow down hiring of more workers, with the existing staff likely to face massive reduction in their pay.
Both national and county governments have blown their wage bill, with some counties spending up to 60 per cent of their income on personnel emolument.
Consequently, the summit directed convention of third wage bill conference to deliberate on measures to reduce the spending.
“Salaries and remuneration commission jointly with IGRTC [Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee] and CoG shall convene the third Wage Bill Conference,” the summit said.
The current wage bill stands at Sh1.79 trillion. This represented 40.48 per cent of projected Sh2.89 trillion projected ordinary in the current financial year.
This follows a salary review by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission last year that gave state officers a pay rise of Sh21.7 billion.
The public wage bill crossed the trillion mark for the first time in 2021-22 when it hit Sh1.055 trillion.
This was an increase of 5.69 per cent from a wage bill of Sh998.64 billion the previous year.
According to the latest expenditure report by Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o, the 47 county governments spent Sh41.79 billion on personnel or 62 per cent of their total expenditures in first three months of the current financial year.
This is almost seven times the Sh6.92 billion the counties spent on development.
“The recurrent expenditure comprised Sh41.79 billion (69 per cent) on Personnel Emoluments and Sh18.76 billion (31 per cent) on Operations and Maintenance expenditure,” the report states.
Regulation 25(1)(b) of the Public Finance Management (County Governments) Regulations, 2015 which limits the county executive’s expenditure on wages and benefits to not more than 35 per cent of the total revenue for the year.
