Clean up government payroll to save money

The National Treasury is grappling with a huge budget deficit and part of this is due to the huge wage bill. Fresh reports now give proper perspective to this. The wage bill is a consequence of the following: one, thousands of ghost workers who are paid from the government coffers, itself a result of a strong web of corrupt officials who sustain a fake payroll to create an avenue for pilfering public resources. The government has perennially talked of cleaning the payroll but without much success.

Matters have been made worse by the county system where, first, the authorities resorted to reckless employment and creating duplication of duties but at a huge cost to taxpayers. Second, the county workers cannot be properly accounted for. Take the particularly upsetting case of Nairobi, where a recent audit revealed it had more than 10,000 ghost workers. Since the 1990s, each administration has attempted to clean up the payroll but nothing much has been achieved.

The other major cause of the ballooning wage bill is unmerited allowances paid to civil servants. A report prepared by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission indicates that last year alone, the government paid more than Sh300 million in allowances to officers for doing work they are already paid to do. A tradition has been evolved in public service where every assignment is done out of station to give reason for civil servants to draw allowances. Government departments are notorious for retreats and workshops, which in actual sense are used to do exactly what the officers are employed to do.

Some of the reasons used to claim the allowances are ridiculous and border on the criminal. For example, the SRC report indicates that former Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich and Principal Secretary Kamau Thugge were paid Sh3.7 million for supervising the budget-making process. This is the core duty for which they have a full-fledged salary.

Unfortunately, although the SRC is constitutionally mandated to guide the government in keeping a tight lid on payroll spending, it lacks the capacity and instruments to do so. Other than issuing circulars and guidelines, it cannot prosecute any officer who flouts them.

Acting National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukar Yatani has committed to budget cuts; the unjustified allowances should be the first to go. Strict auditing and cleaning up of the payroll is imperative to reducing our wage bill and ultimately minimising government spending.