• Inspectorate officers, ECDE teachers, medical and other workers wanted.
• Sonko urges qualified Nairobi residents to apply when vacancies are advertised.
Image: FILE
Nairobi residents will get improved services after City Hall hires 2,500 new staff, Governor Mike Sonko has said.
Sonko said the new staff will be a major boost in decongesting traffic in the CBD, enhancing disaster preparedness and improving medical health services and early childhood education.
The county is set to recruit 800 inspectorate officers, 200 traffic marshals, 200 fire marshals, 30 fire drivers, 520 ECDE teachers, 275 nurses, 165 clinical officers, 64 medical officers and 53 medical clerks.
Sonko's administration will also hire 35 pharmacists, 25 laboratory technicians, 25 social workers, 25 nutritionists, 10 planners, 10 surveyors, 15 road engineers, 10 architects and 225 subordinate staff.
Currently, the county has 12,000 staff.
"Now that the new County Public Service Board has been officially gazetted, we are set to start recruitment of new staff. I therefore call upon all qualified Nairobians to be set to join us through a competitive recruitment process," Sonko said yesterday.
The county has been unable to recruit any additional staff this year because the former County Public Service Board was not properly constituted.
In March, MCAs wanted the interviews of 1,159 people shortlisted for vacant medical positions stopped, citing lack of quorum in the board.
Some contracts of board members had expired and those of the chairman and secretary were set to expire in June.
Initially, the board had seven members but had only been left with three. However, last month the county assembly approved a new County Public Service Board .
The five-member team of Abdihakim Mohamed, Consolata Muthoni, Thomas Mweu, Sharon Mirella and Aisha Wanjiku was vetted by the committee on Labour and Social Welfare and names forwarded to the assembly for approval.
Majority Leader Abdi Hassan Guyo urged the board to swiftly work out the pending issues.
"We expect that the board will first deal with the county staff. There are at least 12,000 county employees in the city, with 60 per cent being non-skilled and aged above 50," he said.
He said the board should come up with a retirement scheme fir staff.
Although county services have never been disrupted due to shortage of staff, the county urgently needs to recruit more workers to improve services.
Last October, it was disclosed that 253 employees had retired and the county urgently needed to fill the positions, prompting the board’s decision to advertise the vacancies.
It was also revealed that currently the county has only 97 city askaris and in order to fully operate within Central Business District, they need about 300 more.
Due to the deficiency, only 15 askaris work at night which renders it almost impossible for them to handle all the traders within the city centre.
Former City Hall director of inspectorate Peter Mbaya said the biggest problem facing the department is aged officers.
"The last time the county government employed city askaris was in 1988. Majority of the city askaris are aged hence they cannot operate effectively," he said.
When Sonko came into leadership in 2017, he announced around 1,000 marshals would be hired to improve traffic flow in the CBD.
However, no recruitment has taken place and the CBD remains congested with matatus. Staffing is also a major problem because of a shortage of nurses and other medical staff.
Nairobi has 1,160 nurses who fall under the Kenya National Union of Nurses. Another 415 are under the Kenya County Government Workers’ Union.
Last month it was revealed that Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital has a staff deficit of 284, with 468 staff against a requirement of 752.
It is expected that once the recruitment takes place some of the medical staff will be deployed to the facility.