The government has developed a human resource information system to manage civil servants.
The system, developed with assistance from the World Bank, will have a payroll module that will manage salaries for civil servants.
Kenya has a problem of ghost workers paid hundreds of millions of shillings thereby inflating the wage bill.
“This payroll system is going to carry everybody who is in the public service; that is, in the mainstream civil service, the county governments, state-owned enterprises, among others,” Public Service PS Amos Gathecha said on Tuesday.
He spoke on the sidelines of the second HR Summit for directors and deputy directors from ministries and departments in the public service in Mombasa.
“What we want to do is at the click of a button, we can know how much money we are paying in terms of salaries and allowances,” Gathecha said.
The Kenya Human Resource Information System (KHRIS) is a web-based system developed to manage the human resource function in the public sector, including the payroll.
“We are expected to migrate our payrolls to the system by July 1. The system is now ready, I can confirm. We have done pilots in the State Department for Public Service, Huduma and in Treasury, and it has worked. We now want to roll it out,” Gathecha said.
All state departments must be in the new payroll by June 30, 2025.
The system will have about eight modules across the human resource function, including the establishment module, which will inform how many officers a state department is supposed to have.
It will also have a module on pensions to make payment seamless. Another module covers leave.
PS Gathecha said the new system will address the problem of ghost workers.
“We expect it will bring in a lot of soberness on how we handle the payroll and how we employ our staff.
“With the new payroll system, we are not going to allow the system to accept any person or cadre that is not in the establishment,” the PS said.
The payroll module has been finalised awaiting links to the Integrated Financial Management Information System, iTax and Central Bank of Kenya internet banking.
“I am already in discussion with KRA [Kenya Revenue Authority] on this. The system has been piloted successfully since April 2024,” the PS said.
Training on the new system for payroll managers in the ministries, departments and agencies is being undertaken in phases.
“The training of trainers should be rolled out any time from now in June,” he said.
Gathecha called on HR directors and deputy directors to familiarise themselves with the new system.
They have to adhere to the resolutions of the third Wage Bill Conference with specific focus on refining strategies to achieve a wage bill to revenue ratio of 35 per cent by June 30, 2028.
“The Salaries and Remuneration Commission will be issuing circulars on these issues. We had set timelines at the Wage Bill Conference but now I think we will be overshooting them. So, new timelines will be issued,” the PS said.
The payroll management policy for public service has been finalised and is awaiting approval by Cabinet.
The policy is meant to provide overarching framework to standardise and harmonise payroll management in public service.
Until now, payroll management has been guided by circulars released from time to time.
The PS said the government is reviewing the current performance management system to embed a productivity component in it in order to strengthen productivity and performance contracting in public service.
This means one’s continued stay in public employment will be majorly based on productivity.
“We are way far behind because when we visited Singapore with the Head of Public Service, they had started discussing productivity way back in the 70s.
“They have since then perfected what they do in public service in terms of productivity,” Gathecha said.
He said from July 1, the government will procure medical cover from private providers for its civil servants in ministries and state departments, and those seconded to the county governments.
Social Health Insurance will cover all Kenyans.
“And then from there we will sit and see as public servants, how can we enhance this? We are working with the Ministry of Health to see what percentage is going to be covered by the SHI and what percentage are we going to get from the private sector,” the PS said.
