The national government on Tuesday announced a fresh recruitment drive aimed at filling 30,000 public service jobs in the next month.
However, reports by The Standard disclosed that all the new civil servants would no longer bag the lucrative permanent and pensionable package which has been scrapped in favour of a new 3-year contract deal.
Public Service Commission (PSC) chairman, Stephen Kirogo, laid out the new terms while speaking during the unveiling of a study on the Public Sector Wage Bill carried out by the Salaries and Remunerations Commission (SRC), on Tuesday evening.
In addition, the PSC chair announced that all promotions and retentions would henceforth be awarded only on merit and not automatically after every three years, as had been the norm.
"We must be brutal if we want to change. This will be our meagre contribution in managing the wage bill," Kirogo asserted.
The PSC chair declared that contrary to popular belief, the civil service was not bloated but rather filled with employees who had turned lazy under the comfort of permanent and pensionable employment terms.
"Our public service must be fit-for-purpose and responsive to the citizens' needs," Kirogo divulged.
Kirogo went on to declare that all civil servants would henceforth be expected to start contributing a portion of their salaries into the retirement scheme, starting next month, with PSC Cabinet Secretary (CS), Margaret Kobia, expected to draw up a gazette notice highlighting the specific amount that they will be expected to remit.
SRC vice-chair, Dalmas Otieno went on to blast the public sector workers gathered at the seminar, blaming them for the current high rate of unemployment.
"I am embarrassed that you are not feeling responsible for the high rate of unemployment. The public sector should be the accelerator of economic growth if the private sector is the engine," he lamented.
