SRC To Review Salaries And Allowances Of Teachers And Other Civil Servants.
Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) to review salaries and allowances of all civil servants to address the rising cost of living.
Civil servants will have their salaries and allowances reviewed every four years under new regulations intended to address the rising cost of living.
The Wages and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has proposed an automatic review every four years of the new regulations presented in Parliament.
At present, there is no timeline for the salary review of officers including teachers, lecturers, doctors and nurses.
The cost of living has increased significantly over the years, weakening the purchasing power of civil servants whose monthly wages have not been revised to adapt to changing economic times.
The changes, if passed by Parliament, will see employees join state officials like the president and MPs whose pay is reviewed every four years.
“The commission reviews and advises on remuneration and benefits for other public officials every four years,” says the commission in the Regulations of the Commission on Salaries and Remuneration (Remuneration and Benefits of the State and Other Public Officials), 2022.
“The commission undertakes the review taking into account the applicable national budgeting and planning cycles,” reads the proposed regulation.
The cost of living measure will be based on the annual consumer price index (CPI) provided by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS). Last year’s CPI was 6.1%.
The lack of law-anchored timelines for the automatic review of salaries and allowances for civil servants has left strikes and collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) as the only avenues available to workers to push for wage increases.
The SRC states that salary reviews must, however, be anchored in budget allocations and performance targets at various government offices.
Public sector wage spending including elected leaders is estimated at 830 billion shillings per year, which is just over half of government revenue for the year ending June 2021.
The tax collection by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) for the period up to June last year was Sh1.669 trillion and the target for the year ending this month is 1.8 trillion shillings.
