Nyeri County government is planning to lay off some staff in a move that seeks to reduce its ballooning wage bill, the Senate County Public Accounts Committee (CPAC) heard on Wednesday.
Nyeri governor Mutahi Kahiga, who appeared before the committee to respond to audit queries for the 2019/2020 Financial Year, said they are keen on scrapping some roles that are not important when delivering the county services to residents in the county.
The governor noted that some positions, such as rat catchers, are targeted for redundancy.
“We are looking at how we will release them. We do not want to have people walking around doing nothing,” the governor told the committee.
He said most were inherited from local authorities as Nyeri served as the provincial headquarters before the advent of the 2010 Constitution.
“We want to declare redundancies as part of a wider effort to bring down the wage bill."
The audit revealed that salaries for employees for the year under review was Sh3,592,854,332 which was equivalent to 52 per cent of the total revenue (Sh6,956,824,044).
The expenditure, therefore, exceeded the threshold of 35 per cent prescribed under Regulation 25 (1) (b) of the Public Finance Management (County Governments) Regulations, 2015.
“The high wage bill is an indication that most of the County’s resources are spent on staff salaries at the expense of development projects and thus impacting negatively on service delivery to the residents of Nyeri,” the Auditor General report said.
Kahiga said the County also inherited all staff from the defunct Local Authorities which included Nyeri Municipal Council, Karatina Municipal Council, Othaya Town Council and Nyeri County Council.
“Though the County inherited those staff not all of them had the skills to assist the County to deliver its mandate compelling the County to fill those gaps where inherited staff had to be retained,” he told the committee.
He said the County Staffing plan was developed to serve as a guide in determining the ideal number of workers required in the County to reduce the wage bill.
“The plan, which was developed to run for the period 2018-2023, was intended to ensure that every Department has sufficient staff with the right skills and competencies to achieve the County Government objectives as highlighted in the County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) 2018-2022,” he explained.
