Hundreds of civil servants and other public officers are facing a dark future after the Public Service Commission (PSC) indicated mass layoff plan citing bloated workforce in at least five government agencies.
The looming bloodbath to dismiss existing workforce has been flagged at a time the government is on a transition ahead of the August 9 General Elections.
The five agencies include; Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) with 536 employees, Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) with 327, Egerton University has 210, Utalii College has 393 and Rongo University with 137 employees.
According to an audit by the PSC, the five institutions have a combined excess workforce of 1,726 leading to waste of resources and mounting pressure on the country’s wage bill.
“The institutions with staff over-establishment to review and align them to the authorized staff establishment,” PSC said.
Additionally, fifteen public institutions are also on the spot for breaching their maximum staff requirement by a combined excess workforce of 1,997.
The institutions include; State Department for University Education and Research (73), State Department for Transport (63), Agricultural Finance Corporation (62), State Department for Development of Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (32), State Department for Gender (13) and State Department for Tourism (12).
The audit also revealed that the authorized workforce establishment for the 261 public institutions was 347,845 of which 220,782 or 63.5 per cent were filled while 127,063 or 36.5 per cent were vacant.
According to the audit, the vacant posts were occasioned by the recruitment moratorium, re-organisation and re-structuring of government institutions and reviewing of the staff establishment.
This comes at a time the government continues to shed excess staffing in an attempt to trim its recurrent expenditure.
The state is grappling with financial challenges forcing it to outsource its finances.
In November 2021, the government had recommended the sacking of more than half of the staff at Kemsa.
The State Corporations Advisory Committee (SCAC) recommended the sacking of nearly half of the Kemsa staff with the jobs of more than 900 employees said to be online at the time.
