When Politicians Politicize Agendas at the Cost of the People

When we wake early in the morning to vote for the leaders we desire, it is only obvious that there is something we have seen in them to convince us of their capability to deliver and it is only fair to give them a chance to do just that and avoid being thrown back and forth by Party politics.

As citizens, we seriously need to pray for the spirit to discern and be able to tell when our leaders are working, those that are honestly working and those that pretend to be working yet all they do is play politics for their own gains while distracting those that are actually focused on delivering.

Laikipia County residents are currently going through such a crisis where their Members of County Assembly (MCA’s) seem to have chosen engaging the Governor in politics over working as the team they ought to be and deliver to their voters.

Laikipia County, despite having made great improvement economically and in revenue collection, is still held hostage by a wage bill that is eating up into its development funds.

Laikipia’s wage bill stands at a worrying 56 percent and has been so for the last decade, despite the Constitution expenditure stipulating that each County ought to spend 35 percent only on its workforce. We spoke to Laikipia Governor’s Senior Advisor, Kiama Kaara to help us separate politics from real issues and this is the insight we got.

Governor Seeks to Bring down Laikipia’s Wage bill from its 56 percent to the 35 Percent as Constitution Requires

What Laikipia County Assembly members are not telling us, Laikipia residents, is that the wage bill is way above what the constitution recommends and hence the need to have it rationalized as it is eating up into the County’s funds.

Laikipia MCA’s are not telling us that the retrenchment is NOT a matter of sending home employees but a matter of cleaning up the County’s workforce, rearranging employees into a relevant job description that will enable service delivery.

Laikipia MCA’s have failed us by not telling us that Laikipia stands to save 240 million shillings as projected if and only it could bring down the workforce by 300 people.

Laikipia’s 56 percent wage bill consists of around 1864 workers with a huge number of this holding redundant jobs as they were employed decades ago and their job description no longer exist.

What the MCA’s we voted for choose to shut our eyes to is that the 190 million shillings they are denying the County executive would actually save Laikipia 240 million shillings in each and every financial year.

Facts on Process: Who Does the County Government of Laikipia Target in Retrenchment?

Does the Laikipia County Government plan to sack people to reduce the wage bill?

“No, but unfortunately a section of the County assembly members have decided to politicize the issue for their own political mileage,” says Kiama.

Kiama explains to us the section the County Government targets in rationalizing the wage bill which he says will involve shifting of jobs both vertically and horizontally. Below are some of the areas the Laikipia County Governor hopes to work on with the 190 million shillings:

• Getting rid of ghost workers in Laikipia’s workforce. Ghost workers in Kenya refer to people that only exist on the payroll and never in physical, Kenya itself losses millions if not billions every year to ghost workers.
• Shifting employees to relevant positions and moving them from redundant positions that no longer serve the County. Some of the positions include those of telephone operators which have since been rendered NOT useful with the era of mobile phones and would be more useful if moved to receptionists or office administrators.
• Have an audit of the County employees as some of those ballooning the wage bill was employed in questionable means and do not qualify for the posts they and are hence not delivering to the people of Laikipia
• Deal with deceased employees who remain on the payroll, years on since their demise
• Encourage voluntary early retirement as a majority of the employees in the agricultural sector are a year or two to retirement. This would mean sending them home with a retirement package.

The National Government did promise to create jobs to the Kenyan youth, but how will this ever be achieved without cleanup in the workforce, with ghost workers that cannot die twice?

Job vacancies in the public sector cannot be realized if a cleanup exercise does not take place and as it remains so, Kenya will continue to lose billions to ghost workers whose real faces are probably people that will continue frustrating any efforts for the cleanup.