Civil servants reject Serem’s pay scheme

Civil servants on Sunday joined doctors and nurses in opposing a new job evaluation by the salaries team as teachers welcomed the assessment and pleaded with their colleagues not to trash it.

The government workers accused the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) of failing to consult them on the pay structure and vowed to reject it.

Mr Tom Odege, the secretary-general of the Union of Kenya Civil Servants said:

“For the SRC to just suggest job groups and skills is to give the government a blank cheque to decide how much civil servants should earn. We expected suggested figures for these groups as we head to negotiations."
 “The workers have no problems with the job groups, but how do you say it is a job evaluation if you still give the government the leeway to decide how much they should earn?”

The SRC on Friday released a report that assessed the country’s more than 600,000 public servants’ jobs and which seeks to, among other things, bridge the gap between the highest and lowest paid workers.

The evaluation seeks to peg salaries to performance while harmonising public service pay.

But on Sunday, the civil servants, the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) and the Kenya National Union of Nurses said the report had not answered questions to do with how jobs would be valued.

TEACHERS WELCOMED THE STRUCTURE

The teachers, on the other hand, welcomed the structure, saying it had given them the best deal in recent times.

“We are extremely satisfied with the evaluation as teachers. It has elevated the value of teachers and unlike other groups, we were involved in the negotiations,” Mr Wilson Sossion, the Kenya National Union of Teachers secretary-general said on Sunday.

He advised his colleagues to follow the teachers’ route and use the report as a basis for negotiating new deals.

“SRC was not supposed to give figures to anything. All they had to do was place people in harmonised job groups. Now, it is up to the unions to place value to the groups by negotiating,” said Mr Sossion.

The Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers Secretary-General Akello Misori said they too were happy with the deal as “we carried out our negotiations based on it”.

“We were involved in negotiations based on this evaluation and the others should follow suit,” said Mr Misori.

On Saturday, doctors and nurses issued separate 21-day strike notices, saying the SRC had given them a raw deal.

300 PER CENT PAY INCREASE

The doctors demanded a 300 per cent pay increase, while the nurses asked for a raise of 25 to 40 per cent and an allowance upgrade of between 14 and 25 per cent.

“For the last two years, SRC has told us to wait to know what exactly a doctor should earn. On Friday, they gave us a lot of nonsense on equality pay with no figures,” Dr Ouma Oluga, the KMPDU secretary-general said in Nairobi on Sunday.

“We are tired and today we are issuing a 21-day strike notice if the 300 per cent pay rise is not paid,” he said.

In the new structures, the SRC came up with five job groups that will apply to all government workers in the national government, counties, and independent commissions and offices.

The teachers’ deal signed last month will see the entry level into the profession upgraded. It will also see more than 100,000 teachers promoted following the phasing out of the P1 entry grade.
Source: nation.co.ke