Press Release: Pegging Civil Servants Pay to Output

The Central Organization of Trade Unions, COTU (K) remains opposed to any attempts by the government to introduce a system of paying its public officers based on their performance as proposed by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC).

Civil servants render national services that are not measurable in terms of productivity and equally there are not individuals working in factories nor producing products to the market where the government can measure such productivity and decide how such workers will be remunerated to provide national services to Kenya in different cadres.

Any such attempts to dictate civil servants pay or productivity performance will not be retrogressive but equally disastrous for the government as it has never happened anywhere including in developed economies like the United States of America where performance contracting emanated and the phenomena remains solely in the private sector and among multinational corporations who hire people on specific terms to exploit and maximize on profits for their shareholders and at no one time can this be imported into a government democratically elected by the people as ours.

At the same time, it is high time our government learnt a lesson from the Kenya Revenue Authority where the management has put all officers under its own performance contract leading to low morale that has translated in low revenue collection as part of the tax collected end up into individual officers pockets due to the uncertainty that lies ahead of his/her job as compared to a permanent and pensionable tax collector where upon such collections remained high.

Let the government not carry out such ridiculous experimental processes in human resource management in a serious and such core sector as the civil service as this will eventually jeopardize and frustrate the badly needed services by wananchi and anybody pushing for such an agenda is a day dreamer out to ruin the future of this country.

This is a free and independent advise by COTU (K) to the government and the SRC should strive to its constitutional mandate of policy and stop misleading the government that a person competitively recruited in the public service could be subjected to some performance contracting as if is working in some industry where such language remains prominent.

Francis Atwoli, EBS, MBS

SECRETARY GENERAL

Administrator

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