Planned hiring of CASs a bitter pill for suffering taxpayers

President William Ruto will announce the names of Chief Administrative Secretaries (CAS) in all ministries once interviews being conducted by the Public Service Commission are concluded and successful applicants identified.

Families and friends of those so appointed will be happy but not many others will be, and not because they feel any malice. Just fed up that the government seems so desperate to act insensitively when it should not.

The CAS post has never been popular with Kenyans. They see in it just a layer of rewarded laziness. When the post formerly known as “Assistant Minister” was abolished, it was an action that received widespread approval.

These were political appointments that added little real value to the public service. It existed solely as a reward mechanism that the President deployed to appreciate support or bribe opposition.

That is still what it is. The courts may have allowed the President to make his appointments when a case seeking to stop the interviews was defeated, but the action does not suddenly imbue the position of the CAS with any legitimacy.

A more powerful case against the appointments is the fact that the government cannot, with a clean conscience, seek to add a burden of hundreds of millions of shillings onto a bloated public wage bill when its default response mode to any temptation to increase the wage bill – or indeed any other public bill – should be an emphatic NO.

Nothing less can be expected from a government whose first public pronouncement was a lament that there was nothing left in the public coffers by the departing government.

Indeed, this was quickly followed by a commitment by the President that his government would shave off Sh300 billion from the current budget, a pledge that has seen many important scheduled projects suspended or discarded.

The President committed to discipline the budgeting process over the next three or so years to align development objectives with revenues and bring the public debt under control.

This is a government that has not disbursed billions of shillings to the counties as required by law — in fact only a quarter has been made this financial year.

There is pressure for funds from universities that are desperately seeking a miracle to pay off close to the Sh65 billion they owe various creditors, including the revenue authority, staff saccos and pension funds.

Public debt

More than Sh600 billion is sitting in the public debt books owing to various service providers, many of whose businesses have been destroyed because of being owed for many years.

Schools are pleading for funds to increase their capacities to absorb students in the lower secondary levels. Billions of shillings are required to buy food for the starving millions, a tragedy whose end is not in sight. The list of needs is endless and the pot of funds is seriously starved.

Hence the surprise at the latest move to add and pay staff that the ministries do not require. Just last week, a memo was circulating from Public Service Cabinet Secretary Aisha Jumwa to the chairman of the Public Service Commission, asking him to reject requests to extend employment beyond 60 years and cancel subsisting extensions. Part of the reason for this must be the need to reduce the bloated wage bill.

And truth be told, very few of the names published for interviews are in need of jobs. Former governors and deputy governors, permanent secretaries, members of Parliament and others currently in the employment form a significant majority of those listed. If the government has money to throw away — which it does not — it surely should not be in the direction of these people!

But is the government going to listen? Unlikely. It is becoming routine to announce taxation measures that add misery to an already beaten population and commit to spending millions on highly dubious ventures.

Like the strong rumour heard last week of plans to hire intercessors to pray for all sorts of graces to this country, starting with rains. Such is the madness that seems to be in control of things that few will be surprised by such a travesty!

President Ruto’s energy and focus promised, if nothing else, discipline and measured austerity in the management of public affairs. The CAS appointments represent the exact opposite of that. They are just an indulgence to reward a few, a thump in the nose to the millions of suffering Kenyans who can only watch as the President prepares to gift each one of these people a Sh2 million all-inclusive monthly hamper.

He would do well to pause this aggravating activity although it is now clear that Kenyans’ cries of despair are nothing more than voices in the dark — heard but not listened to. 

Mr Mshindi, a former editor-in-chief of Nation Media Group, is now consulting. [email protected]; @TMshindi)