Early retirement scheme to reduce City Hall wage bill
The Nairobi City County Government has devised a new scheme that will help reduce its wage bill.
The voluntary early retirement scheme is expected to ensure City Hall has more money to improve competency and service delivery to residents.
The county government is currently putting in place a framework for the scheme targeting county staff.
Governor Ann Kananu however sought to allay fears that the scheme is aimed at pushing county staff out.
“Let me clarify that we are not sending anybody home. We are simply trying to ensure efficient and effective service delivery at the county government levels as envisaged by the Capacity Assessment and Rationalization Programme (CARPS) for the Public Service. This is opportunity to offer an alternative to redundancy,” said Kananu.
In a speech read on her behalf by acting county secretary and head of county public service Jairus Musumba in Mombasa during a sensitization workshop on the new scheme, Kananu appealed to the county public service to come up with an elaborate framework that will satisfy given mandates and functions.
“Right-sizing man power has become an important management strategy today due to intense competition. If we continue to conduct business as usual the private sector will step into the gap and provide services that they are not mandated to provide under the law at exorbitant prices which will be borne by Nairobi residents,” Kananu warned.
Musumba said voluntary early retirement is regarded as the most humane technique that organisations use to ensure they retain required skills and competencies.
“The Nairobi City County wage bill is currently above the recommended expenditure, at 46 percent, in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act, 2012 as per the Financial Statement of the County Executive in 2020,” said Musumba.
The overall objective of the voluntary scheme is to ensure the Nairobi City County functions are properly structured, establish the existing human resource capacity, and make recommendations on the optimal staffing levels based on the re-aligned structure.
Others are to facilitate right placement and deployment of staff within and across sectors, examine and analyze the existing human resource profiles and skills inventories to inform the rationalization programme, and recommend for separation of redundancies, surplus staff and provide a scheme that allows staff to exit the service on a voluntary basis in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.
Nairobi City County Public Service Board chairman Thomas Kasoa has expressed optimism that the new scheme will be successful and help the county government to streamline its service delivery.
“Ours is to implement whatever has been brought forward. We must strive to achieve all this and we are ready to support the new scheme,” added Kasoa.
Nairobi City County Government Human Resource director Lilian Maina has assured county staff that they will be involved in developing the framework for voluntary early retirement adding that no one will be victimized.
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