The government is set to introduce attendance registers to track civil servants' presence at work as part of a broader effort to reform the civil service.
Public Service Cabinet Secretary Geoffrey Ruku made the announcement on Tuesday morning during an impromptu visit to the Nyeri Regional Headquarters.
He added that the government will also enforce adherence to performance appraisal systems and conduct a baseline survey to assess employee satisfaction across all ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs).
"Going forward, we want to engage all supervisors across all levels of administration and introduce an attendance register to ensure every employee has a clearly defined schedule of duties," Ruku stated.
''We will also ensure that each employee adheres to our performance and appraisal systems. We will also carry baseline survey to ascertain the satisfaction level of all the employees in all MDAs.''
Ruku warned that civil servants who report late or disappear from duty without explanation would be treated as ghost workers and that the government would take the necessary disciplinary action against them.
He added that, ''The Ministry of Public Service, Human Capital Development and Special Programmes through the human resource officers deployed across all Government offices will be taking the necessary steps to strictly enforce the policies and procedures guiding public service providers across the country, under the findings from the visits.''
According to the CS, there is a need to bring back the Public Service working culture under the prevailing conditions to enhance service delivery to Kenyans.
Additionally, he raised concerns that many Kenyans seeking government services arrive at public services centres very early in the morning, only to find doors closed as public servants report to work late.
"Except for Teachers Service Commission and Huduma Centre where 100 and 98 per cent of staff respectively were in their service desks at 8am giving services to Kenyans, most of the other government offices had less than 50 per cent of staff at their work stations at 8am as stipulated in the Human Resource Management Policies for public service," the CS added.
Initially, in a bid to streamline the public service, the CS had announced that plans were underway to ensure employment in the public sector is purely based on merit.
According to Ruku, the employment process in the public sector has been tainted because some people are not getting jobs based on merit, but because of connections, assuring that this is set to change in the coming days.
The Ministry is already instituting measures within the public sector to ensure meritocracy is followed to the letter.
