By Eddah Waithaka
President William Ruto has taken a decisive step towards improving the welfare of civil servants in key sectors by ordering the speedy implementation of a report containing atleast 200 recommendations. These recommendations, submitted by the retired Chief Justice Maraga in November last year, focus on improving the overall welfare, salaries, allowances and working conditions of civil servants.
Of the total of 598 recommendations, the government has started to implement them, in particular those requiring administrative action with no financial implications.
Speaking at a press briefing in Nairobi on 6th June, the Principal Secretary for Interior and National administration, Dr Raymond Omollo, said there was also another set of recommendations that required policy and legislative reforms, which the ministry had also started working on in terms of drafting the various laws to address the concerns of the three services.
PS Omollo said the guidelines for implementing the first phase of the report were finalized in March.
The first phase involved the implementation of recommendations that required only administrative action and no funding.
“In this phase, service charters of the three services were reviewed and service standards developed. Staff trainings and sensitizations focusing on the new service standards and far-reaching service delivery reforms have started,” PS Omollo said in a statement.
He said the implementation of this phase of reforms is at 65 per cent for NYS, 42 per cent for Kenya Prisons Service and 37 per cent for NPS.
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In addition, the PS noted that there were also those recommendations that required financial input, which again there are commitments from both government and our partners to be able to fund and support.
“The last set of recommendations are just a few group of recommendations that requires further policy guidance and direction, so where there are probably conflicts between different agencies that are involved. But that just constitutes 4% out of the nearly 600 recommendations that came out of the taskforce,” said PS Dr. Raymond Omollo.
The PS further noted that today’s meeting was basically to commend their development partners on the strategic framework that they have been working on over the last few months with their input and the input of a number of the agencies involved as well as the independent institutions within government and a number of those independent institutions include the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, the Public Service Commission as well as the ICOR and all the other bodies involved.
“In terms of what has gone into this process is that there are four main aspects of the strategic plan. So there are issues to do with human resource that we need to deal with. There are issues to do with operational readiness and logistical actions that we need to take. Then there are issues around capacity building. And lastly, there are issues around leadership oversight.
And we are going to do it, ” he concluded.
On the question of whether some of these reforms have been considered in the current budget, the one that is being debated, 2024/2025. The PS noted that he did not know if some of the recommendations were taken into account in the budget, especially the welfare of service members, as a number of these reforms are already being taken care of.
“So one example is that within the National Police Service, there is already a budget line of about 6.5 billion dollars that has been committed in the current financial year and of course in the next financial year as part of the support for that. Therefore, the ongoing discussions around the budget would not necessarily stop us or be a hindrance to the implementation of some of these reforms, because as we go along and unpacking the recommendations, where there will be need to make strategic interventions, there are existing provisions within the financing mechanism to be able to address that,” PS Omollo added.
Further, the PS went on to say that their development partners have already committed a significant amount of resources to support the implementation of these reforms. And what the ministry has done today would also help them to plan ahead for additional commitments that we expect.
