Across all government offices in Kenya, there’s a quiet obsession that rarely makes headlines but softly drains billions: the hunger for per diems.
These daily travel and subsistence allowances, meant to cover modest costs for officials on duty away from home, have morphed into a parallel and informal economy that shapes behaviour, distorts priorities and increasingly erodes service delivery to citizens, shaping how the public service works and, often, whether it works at all.
Per diems were designed to compensate public officers fairly for travel-related expenses. But over the years, they have turned into an unofficial income stream; predictable, tax-free and often easier to earn. The line between reasonable compensation and per diem-driven activity has blurred.
Multiple audits and international assessments have pointed to rising per diem expenditure in the public sector. Long meetings scheduled more for allowances than outcomes, and an incentive structure that rewards travel over outputs have become the norm.
With the realisation that billions of taxpayer money is going to waste in the name of daily subsistence allowance, pressure has started mounting from several directions. Donors weary of seeing project funds consumed by administrative allowances have begun to tighten rules.
Some international partners have stopped paying per diems to Kenyan officials on donor-funded programmes as part of a crackdown on wasteful expenditures and poor value-for-money outcomes. The move is a direct response to documented abuses and an attempt to realign incentives toward delivering services rather than attending events.
At the policy level there is tension and inconsistencies at the same time. On one hand, government instruments set official rates and stipulate entitlement rules; on the other hand, proposals have sought to expand the tax-exempt threshold for daily allowances – a change that could unintentionally cement per diems as a significant, tax-free source of income for employees.
The dilemma, however, is alive; the majority of public officers, especially at the policy level, are conflicted when it comes to enforcement of stringent rules on per diems and are not very keen to crack the whip. In some government departments, staff joke that if you want to have a proposal for an activity approved faster, ensure you include the approver as a participant to incentivise.
This highly entrenched culture erodes objectivity in decision-making, where the motivation becomes the allowances at the expense of service delivery. Auditor General reports have consistently warned of the overuse of daily subsistence allowances and noted that unnecessary trips and prolonged meetings inflate project costs and slow decision-making.
This, however, appears to fall on deaf ears and no remedy appears in sight. A simple activity that can be implemented by a handful of officers within a day or two will end up having a list of tens of officers, some with no defined roles. The result is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of shillings, gone.
Sector audits repeatedly show the consequences in the numbers: inflated travel costs, duplicate trips and payments that lack adequate justification.
In some audit snapshots, training and travel budget line items absorb sums far out of proportion to the actual work done; and in a culture where allowances are expected, staff can delay or re-route duties in favour of per diem opportunities. These are not only accounting irregularities; they are misplaced incentives that translate into empty clinics, unfinished infrastructure and delayed social services.
Fixing the problem requires both tightening rules and redesigning incentives. First, stronger oversight and transparency are non-negotiable: standardised, publicly accessible registers of trips, per diem payments and outcomes would deter abuse and make it easier to link spending to impact.
Second, performance metrics must be reoriented so that travel is authorised only when there is demonstrable value—clear deliverables, measurable outputs and follow-up mechanisms.
Third, donors and government alike should prefer virtual engagement where possible and shift budgets from per diem-heavy models to direct investment in frontline service capacity.
The stakes are clear: Every unnecessary workshop means a delayed road, an empty dispensary or an unserved citizen. Billions that could build classrooms, stock hospitals or repair boreholes are instead absorbed by hotels, fuel and envelopes of per diem cash.
And the tragedy is not only financial, it’s moral. When official undertakings become a side hustle, the public loses faith in the very institutions meant to serve it.
Reclaiming those resources and the public trust they represent depends on policy clarity, enforcement, transparency and a shift in institutional culture away from per diem-driven incentives and toward impact-driven public service.
If Kenya is to meet its development goals, the bureaucracy must be measured by results, not by the number of nights spent in hotels. Cleaning up per diem culture is not merely an accounting exercise; it is about realigning public servants’ incentives with the public good.
The meetings will always be necessary, but they should serve citizens first, not the other way round. It’s time to trade the comfort of conferences for the conviction of real work. Citizens deserve more than workshops; they deserve results.
Media and communications expert
