Harmonising of salaries in the public service may be the solution to the rampant strikes by civil servants.
Nakuru Deputy Governor Joseph Ruto has said that harmonising the salaries could address situations like the ongoing teachers’ strike.
Ruto noted that there are a lot of discrepancies in public service salaries that have resulted due to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) allegedly failing to get facts from the ground.
Speaking during the launch of the County Job Evaluation Programme in Nakuru, Ruto called on the SRC to consult more and get in touch with counties to be able to sort out the issues of irregularities.
“SRC should also check on the entry point of some officers to the public service and consider also those who have been in the service for more than 10 years. You might find a new officer getting employed directly to job group M yet another long serving officer who has been there for 10 years or more has only moved to job group L. This demotivates some officers and it’s unfair,” he noted.
The commission’s officers are in Nakuru for the job group evaluation programme which will be running for ten days in the county. SRC commissioner Serah Kinyua has said that they will be conducting the evaluation exercise to determine the true worth of public service jobs.
“Jobs will be evaluated and a grading system developed. The remuneration of each grade shall be determined by the pay structure developed through a salary structure developed through a salary benchmarking exercise,” said Kinyua.
She said that the evaluation will also help in managing public wage, decrease the cost of doing business, and ensure job security and employment opportunities and economic growth.
The job evaluation exercise will involve service and regulatory state corporations, commercial state corporations, civil service, research institutions, public universities and tertiary education.
“Other areas to be evaluated are the constitutional commissions, independent offices, teaching service, disciplined services and county governments,” she added.
Ruto urged all county workers to be open with the commission to help in sorting the salary issues once and for all.