LOW PAY and job insecurity are fuelling discontent in Kenya's public sector, with key utility providers facing threats of industrial action that the government appears unprepared to address or resolve.

The discontent is largely said to arise from recent selective salary reviews for teachers, judicial officers, the police force, university lecturers, permanent secretaries and Members of Parliament while employees in state corporations' and on the central government payroll have been left out.

Recently, employees of the energy utility companies – KenGen and the Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) – issued statutory 21-day strike notices, raising the spectre of industrial action that would plunge the country into darkness and halt industrial processes that rely on power supply from the national grid.

As if on cue, employees of leading communication service providers – Postal Corporation and Telkom Kenya – announced last Tuesday said that they were tired of dialogue and would post a strike notice soon even as the management continued to insist that 6,000 workers will face the axe as the two firms seek to trim their workforce and become more competitive. 

John Waweru, managing director of Telkom Kenya, said, "The company has to take this painful step in readiness for acute competition from new entrants into our core fixed line segment."

Speculation over the fate of 8,000 workers under the Nairobi City Council's water and sewerage department is also causing anxiety among consumers over the quality and supply of water. It took an assurance from Nairobi Mayor Joe Aketch that no retrenchments were being considered to restore a temporary calm. But the local government workers' union is already contemplating industrial action. 

Mr Aketch said the employees will be transferred to a new company, the Nairobi Water Company which is due to start operations soon. 

About 140,000 employees represented by the Union of Kenya Civil Servants (UKCS) are also locked in negotiations with the government over their 600 per cent pay rise demand backdated to July last year. Alphayo Nyakundi, the UKCS secretary general, said, "We are waiting to see what the government will offer but it must be backdated to July 2003." 

Talks between the union and a government team led by Internal Security Minister Dr Chris Murungaru over the past fortnight have failed to resolve the issue. Mr Nyakundi said he would not comment further on the deliberations as the union seeks "some clarifications from the government" which is understood to be ready to commit an extra Ksh7 billion ($89.7 million) towards the pay increase but only from July this year.

The government's reaction to the strike threat by the Kenya Electrical Trades Workers Union (Ketawu) took the form of an assertion by Energy Minister Ochillo Ayacko that no pay rise for the employees would be forthcoming until the energy sector was revived. However, the minister went easy on the retrenchment issue, saying plans to see off 1,000 KPLC employees had been shelved because the reforms currently in progress would turn around KPLC's fortunes.

Demands for higher wages are becoming the norm in a public sector bloated by years of political patronage that saw uncontrolled recruitment of employees beyond established capacities in the civil service, key parastatals and municipal authorities. Because of the lack of qualifications of the surplus workers, efficiency has suffered and trade unions are increasingly at pains to justify pay increases.

"Let them first work towards improving the power company's profitability," Mr Ayacko reportedly advised KPLC employees. An optimal mix between pay and productivity, however, will ultimately lead to job losses in the public sector, with those retained taking home more for their effort as advocated by the World Bank.

The bottom line of the government's dilemma, however, appears to be that it is short on the kind of cash that would satisfy the appetite of public officers who have, experienced few if any, pay rises over the years, to the extent that their average wage pay is about half of that in the private sector for an equivalent position, according to theEconomic Survey for 2003.

So problematic is the issue that the government is finding it difficult to put pen to paper on contracts of senior parastatal chiefs headhunted from the private sector last year, for fear of causing further discontent. Although they were lured from secure jobs that were paying Ksh1 million-plus ($12,820) in monthly salaries, the government is apparently increasingly afraid of a revolt in the civil service in the wake of rising salary disparities.

Already, the parastatal chiefs earn double the salaries of the permanent secretaries in their line ministries, to whom the chief executives report and who should theoretically earn more than their subordinates. 

The government is also anxious to avoid massive discontent over "huge" salaries for selected positions in the civil service of the kind that erupted when it was revealed that the top job at the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission had a Ksh2.5 million ($32,051) monthly salary attached to it.
 
 

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