Nairobi county staff aged 50 years and above will benefit from a Sh100 million voluntary early retirement scheme to be rolled out in the next financial year 2021-22.
This is aimed at reducing the county’s bloated wage bill and boost the ageing workforce.
The scheme is highlighted in the Nairobi County Annual Development Plan 2021-2022 which was approved on Tuesday by the county assembly.
In the report, Devolution and Public Management executive Vesca Kangongo highlighted that employees who had asked to leave will receive the retirement package.
She said the county will ensure that their pension contribution will also be channelled towards the retirement scheme.
The voluntary early retirement policy was developed in 2018 but delayed due to unexplained reasons.
In the financial year 2018-19, only 400 out of the targeted 731 workers voluntarily left the county between July and January 2019.
In the same year, Sh1.3 billion was spent monthly to compensate employees.
According to records from City Hall in FY 2017-18, Sh14.84 billion was spent as wages for 12,496 staff, representing 56 per cent of the total revenue collected that year.
This violates the Public Finance Management Act which requires that a county government’s wage bill shall not exceed 35 per cent of its total budget.
CEC Kangogo explained that the county has been sourcing funds to ensure that they are up to date with their pension contributions.
“County Government has a huge workforce who are aged and sickly with most of them requesting for early retirement. We have also been ensuring that the retirement scheme policy is available before we release the funds,” she said.
A biometric report by City Hall released in November 2019 showed that despite the acute youth unemployment in the country, only 14 per cent, or 792 of the 11,603 county workers were young.
The workforce has 6,118 women and 5,485 men.
Of the 11,603, some 5,709 are aged 50 and above; 19 are above the retirement age of 60.
A total of 2,712 workers are aged between 55 and 59, 2,978 are between 50 and 54 years and 2,663 are between 45 and 49 years.
The report says 1,757 are 20 to 44 years; 1,4474 are below 40; 682 are between 35 and 39 years.
Out of the 792 young people, 621 are between 30 and 34 years and 171 are below 30.
The April 2019 register indicated City Hall had 11,988 employees.
However, 385 of them were not registered during the biometric listing.
Of these, 200 retired between April and November 2019, 85 were training overseas, 58 were on suspension due to disciplinary issues and 23 had died.
Another 11 employees resigned during the review period.
The biometric registration was launched by former Governor Mike Sonko in May 2019 to weed out ghost workers and imposters.
Last year in April a total of 6,852 county staff were seconded to the Nairobi Metropolitan Services.
In the same month, the Public Service Commission was hiring at least 1,000 inspectorate officers to replace those heading for retirement and invigorate the department.
They included 300 enforcement officers and 700 enforcement constables.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
