MPs have vowed to ground the operations of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) by hatching a plan to reduce the pay perks from millions to a meagre Ksh 16,700 per month.
The legislators have been in cold relations with SRC following the recent suit against MPs over their house allowances.
SRC filed a petition in court to have legislators' house allowance scrapped off and the MPs ordered to return the amount they have received in the past one year.
This move is seen as a vengeance plot by Parliament. The MPs want to amend the law and deny the SRC bosses their hefty monthly perks.
The SRC Act is the target which they have set their eyes on. They want to have it amended so that commissioners are employed on a part-time rather than full-time basis.
Section 4 (3) of the SRC Act, states that the chairperson and members of the commission serve on a full-time basis. The duration of service of the 13-member commission is a non-renewable term of six years.
If they have their way, the current SRC commissioners will forfeit their monthly salaries and will be only entitled to a sitting allowance, which the lawmakers want to be pegged at Ksh 50,000 per session.
Some crafty MPs are even considering reducing the suggested Ksh 50,000 allowance for each sitting, which would make service as a commissioner in the SRC the lowest paid within the job group.
Part 1 of the second schedule of the SRC Act notes that the commission should have at least four meetings in every financial year and that not more than four months should elapse between one meeting and the next.
Should MPs amend the Act, therefore, commissioners will earn a maximum Ksh 200,000 annually after holding the four recommended sittings which translates to Ksh 16,700 a month.
The first SRC commissioners served on a part-time basis before MPs changed the law in April 2018 to have them serve a full-term of six years.
The warfare between the two parties is still on with the MPs proposing to slash the Ksh600 million budget allocated to the commission in the next financial year by Ksh104 million.
They have also rejected the commission’s proposal that it be facilitated to acquire land to build its headquarters citing that the idea is not feasible.
