Nakuru County governor Kinuthia Mbugua has maintained that he will not yield to pressure from the senate's committee on Public Accounts Committee to sack 'excess' employees under him due to high monthly wage bills.
The Nakuru county boss was speaking on Monday at Nakuru High School during the county government's annual prayer fest for employees where he revealed that the senate committee is piling pressure on him to lay off part of his bloated workforce as a remedial measure to cub the skyrocketing wage bill.
"My administration has spent over Sh4.2 billion out of Sh6 billion budgetary allocation from National Treasury on salaries and wages only. This county is among the highest with many employees however I cannot just sack employees because it will render them jobless, clear measures should be put in place in order to solve this problem," Mbugua said.
According to the Bony Khalwale led committee, among those employees on the spot include those without academic credentials to hold on to the jobs and employees that are due for retirement but are still on the county government's payroll.
However, Mbugua pointed that a retrenchment exercise must be handled with sobriety to avoid undue suffering of victims.
"We need to make proper arrangements to the employees so that we ensure they have what can sustain them to the end before relieving them of their jobs, but before that I will not fire anybody in my government," Mbugua further stated.
Mbugua also used the opportunity to advise young employees to further their studies in their areas of specialties in a bid to improve service delivery to Nakuru County residents.
During the ceremony three diligent county government retirees were honoured and awarded an early Christmas of Sh50,000 each.