Astounding 69.7pc of Kenya’s public institutions lack succession plans

By Steve Umidha

A staggering 69.7per cent of public institutions (Kenya) lack succession plans of its senior staff, a new report has revealed.

The study on Public Sector Wage Bill released today by The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) also explored human resource management and organizational strategies, practices, policies and processes at institutional level found that only 95.9 per cent of institutions use Human Resource Policies and Procedures to guide on recruitment, promotion, performance management as well as training.

It also showed that most public institutions have no systematic way of determining critical roles within an organization, identifying and assessing possible successors.

The report is now calling for improvements to public sector performance through harmonization of public sector human resource policies such as recruitment, promotion, career progression, performance management, and training, which would help public institutions to attract and retain requisite skills.

The SRC study further wants strong measures instigated to automate and integrate payroll management system in the public sector to mitigate wastage and fraud through human resource processes and payroll management.

The public wage bill has been rising over the years and there has been concerted effort in the government to bring it to a level which is affordable, competitive, equitable, transparent and sustainable. It is for this reason that the 2018 Public Wage Bill Study seeks to determine the level of the public wage bill and the associated policies and practices to inform management of the wage bill.

The study further sought to establish controls towards managing public wage bill.

To further tame ballooning country’s wage Bill, The National Treasury last week announced that it will take radical reforms meant to tame the rising public wage bill and reduce pension budget which has recorded a threefold increase in the last decade.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich indicated in his budget statement last Thursday the government had embarked on a process of revalidating some 270,000 pensioners whose monthly dues will cost exchequer Sh86 billion in the current financial year up from Sh25 billion in the 2008/09 fiscal year.

“The increase in the pension budget over the years is unsustainable. Between February and May we conducted a payroll cleansing exercise for pensioners to authenticate recipients of monthly pension payments,” Rotich outlined during the budget presentation at the National Assembly.

Other measures instituted by the National Treasury include the restriction of public service hiring and the cleaning up of ghost workers from the public service wage bill which accounts for a significant portion of the national governments Sh1.8 trillion allocation in the Sh3.02 trillion 2019/22 financial year budget.

The draft policy by the Treasury is expected to have a clear guideline for the management of the pension budget, with the National Pension Policy and Public Service Superannuation Scheme further hoped will ease the pension burden on the exchequer and free resources for other critical national priorities.