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No immediate pay review for striking Kenya lecturers

Monday February 20 2017
UASU

Striking Kenyan lecturers demonstrate in Mombasa. PHOTO | FILE

Striking Kenyan university dons will have to wait for four months before their demand for salary review can be addressed.

The government has frozen salary reviews for employees in higher learning institutions pending completion of a job evaluation exercise in June.

The Salaries and Remuneration Commission said the evaluation being done by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young would lay the basis for increasing the salaries of lecturers, government researchers, the Kenya Police, the Kenya Defence Forces, the National Intelligence Services and other members of the disciplined forces such as the National Youth Service, Kenya Prisons, Kenya Forestry Services, the Witness Protection Agency and Kenya Wildlife Services.

“We are already engaged this exercise and our people are already in the universities,” said Anne Gitau, Salaries and Remuneration Commission Secretary.

However, University Academic Staff Union chairman Muga K’Olale said the lecturers will stay away from work until their demands around the 2013-2017 CBA are met.

Ms Gitau said the job evaluation, which started in December last year, will guide salary reviews in line with a policy puts the entire civil service on a new job grading system with a harmonised pay structure, starting from July 1.

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“We have ring-fenced some money for this category of public officers, which will be released upon completion of the job evaluation and grading exercise,” Ms Gitau said.

However, workers from quasi-government institutions, parastatals and the uniformed forces will still benefit from the $1 billion in the 2017/8 budget approved by the Cabinet two weeks ago for increasing the salaries of public servants.

National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich said the return to work formula expected to be struck with the striking doctors was also included in the basket for better public service pay. Also in the pipeline is recruitment of 10,000 police officers and 5,000 teachers.

“The money is for all civil servants including doctors. The figure could be less than Ksh100 billion ($1 billion) once the payrolls are firmed up. The implementation will be over four years, translating into between Ksh20 billion ($200 million) and Ksh25 billion ($250 million) per year,” Mr Rotich said.

READ: Kenya civil servants set for pay rise in July

The public sector job evaluation is an attempt by the government to control the wage bill and the growing public debt, which currently stands at around Ksh3.6 trillion ($36 billion).

Ms Gitau said the revised salaries will be determined by the capacity of the economy to pay and the wage structure of the other East African Community member states.

The lecturers have been on strike for the past four weeks, demanding up to 400 per cent pay rise.

Efforts by the state to end the strike by offering them Ksh10 billion ($100 million) proved futile as lecturers viewed the move as a slap in the face.

Consultant firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst &Young have been recruited to carry out the job evaluation exercise for the lecturers and disciplined forces respectively. The exercise is designed to ascertain the relative worth of one job compared with another in an institution  in an attempt to reduce income disparities in the public service and boost workers’ morale and productivity.  

“We are looking at the relative worth of every job,” Ms Gitau said.

Kenya has 45 research institutions, 59 tertiary education institutions, and 33 universities.

The job evaluation was launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta in June 2015.

The initial phase of the exercise focused on five key sectors — the civil service; commercial and strategic state corporations; constitutional commissions, independent offices and teaching services, service and regulatory state corporations and county governments.

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