The Public Service Commission (PSC) and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) have approved the National Government Administrative Officers’ Field Service Allowance.
Interior Principal Secretary, Karanja Kibicho, made the revelations on Thursday as he thanked the agencies for the move.
This is a relief to those who will benefit from the new allowances given the nature of their work.
The rates and scales of the approved allowances were not made public. He said the ministry gladly acknowledges this pertinent move geared towards motivating the officers with a view to improving service delivery.
He said the ministry gladly acknowledges this pertinent move geared towards motivating the officers with a view to improving service delivery.
“The authorization of the extraneous allowance had come after extensive deliberations on recompensing the administrators – from the Assistant Chief all the way up to the Regional Commissioner – commensurate with the nature of their work and the risks that they face in the field,” he said.
Besides routine coordination of security services across the country, their mandate has in the recent past been expanded through executive orders No. 3/2014, No. 1/2016, and No. 1/2018 (revised).
This is in addition to executive orders No. 1 of 2019 and No. 2 of 2020, which contain presidential directives aimed at strengthening service delivery up to the grassroots level.
He said the available human resource capacity within the NGAOs structure has been stretched, compelling the administrators to shoulder almost double the usual responsibilities.
In determining the allowances, PSC and SRC had also taken into account the extra responsibilities, extraneous nature of their roles, fairness and equity relative to all other public servants, and broad implications on the fiscal sustainability of the wage bill in the entire public sector.
Kibicho said the ministry Thursday met with PSC to discuss succession management and filling vacancies within the established structures in the ministry using internal capacity.
The deliberations revolved around the employment terms of administrative officers in the ministry’s headquarters as well as those in the field.
According to the ministry, the proposed allowance was in recognition of the highly challenging working environment that the officers operate in.
The officers in the ministry were tasked with extra responsibilities over and above the unusual responsibilities emergent from their core duties in their daily operations.
“This state of affairs needs a review of the terms and conditions of service for this cadre considering the relative complexities and ‘intrinsic’ worth of the job,” a statement from the ministry said.
Key to note is that the officers are burdened with the responsibilities to; maintain good government image and specifically representation of the Head of State at any rank in the command and control structure, promotion of Statehood and Nationhood and performance of the principal functionary and protocol as the Government spokespersons in areas of their jurisdiction.
They also do Coordination, Supervision, overseeing and reporting on service delivery and projects implementation by MDAs to the president.
On this premise as backed by a comparative benchmarking study of administrative and security institutions’ practices regionally and internationally and understanding the budgetary constraints in funding key Government priority programmes and projects in the ministry and other MDAs, and in an effort to ensure improved performance and productivity is guaranteed by the officers through commensurate remuneration and reward, the allowances were approved, the statement added.
