Counties double their staff as wage bill crisis worsens

Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu

Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu.Counties have been hiring more staff every year in what has doubled employee numbers in the devolved units.

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

Counties have been hiring more staff every year in what has doubled employee numbers in the devolved units, worsening the wage bill migraine.

Data from the Economic Survey shows that over the eight years since the birth of devolved units, they have, on average, been hiring 10,000 staff yearly.

It shows that workforce in counties has grown from 94,700 in 2013 to 204,600 last year, with campaign and election times coming out as the time governors employ the most workers.

This is despite various warnings by the Auditor-General, Controller of Budget (COB), Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) and other government agencies on counties’ heavy spending on personnel emoluments as development is shelved.

Reports of 2021 and 2017 show that by 2012, county governments had a total of 37,700 workers, who were transferred from the defunct local authorities.

New workers

The number shot to 94,700 when county governments were officially established after the 2013 election, and later to 99,600 in 2014. This means that by 2013, counties had an average of 2,014 staff each, after the hiring of 57,000 workers.

By 2015, the counties had a total of 110,500 employees, meaning that in the year, 10,900 new workers had been hired. This would shoot by 46,800 new workers in the pre-election year 2016, seeing the workforce in county governments hit 157,300, as various governors campaigned for re-election across the country.

In the election year 2017, counties hired 18,200 new workers, to see numbers hit 175,500.

‘Economic Survey’

In 2018, counties employed the least number of workers since the onset of devolution at 3,200.

The Economic Survey 2021 showed that in 2019 counties hired 11,300 new workers, which increased by about 3,000 last year, to see the workforce in devolved units cross the 204,600 mark.

This would mean that on average, counties had 4,353 workers each by last year, a 116 per cent rise from the number they had in 2013.