The Kenya Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) has laid out a new plan that seeks to check the ballooning public wage bill.

In the proposed structure outlined on Monday in Nairobi, state officers will lose some of their fat allowances and take pay cuts at all levels.

The president and his deputy are among officers whose salaries have been slashed in the new structure that takes effect from September 2017 to 2022.

Prone to abuse

The plan, according to SRC boss Sarah Serem, is to slash the public wage bill by 35 per cent and save Kenya over $77 million (Sh8bn) a year.

Some of the perks the SRC scrapped are mileage and special responsibility allowances that it said "were prone to abuse".

Instead of mileage allowances, the SRC has created zones for which state officers will get a one-month allowance.

Plenary sessions

"There were claims of up to $20,000 (Sh2m) per month," Ms Serem said of the abuse of mileage allowance.

Other perks that were abolished are governors’ and deputy governors’ allowances.

MPs will also not be paid a sitting allowance for plenary sessions while House managers, such as the Majority and Minority leaders and committee chairmen, have lost special responsibility allowances

"We should strive towards being a producing country as opposed to being a consuming one," she said.