Civil servants gobbled Sh442m airtime working from home

The state spent Sh442 million on airtime in the 2020/2021 financial year to facilitate civil servants working from home because of Covid-19 restrictions on movement, a new report has shown.

A survey by the Public Service Commission (PSC) shows that some 28,211 workers – the equivalent of 12 percent of the total workforce of public institutions – were assisted to work away from their offices at the peak of the pandemic.

It means that on average each worker was issued with Sh14,958 in airtime in the one-year period – indicating the huge economic knocks of the pandemic on taxpayers.

“It was established that 73 per cent of the institutions (public) facilitated their staff to work off-site” PSC said in a report.

“A total of Sh441,948,653 was utilised to facilitate the officers with airtime to work offsite.”

Limits on movement

Civil servants were in April 2020 directed to work from their homes after the government imposed limits on movement and bans on social gatherings.

The work-from-home directive mainly targeted civil servants aged 58 and above who were deemed more vulnerable to contracting the virus.

But the restrictions on travel and meetings by civil servants had their positive side, with taxpayers saved from footing billions of shillings in expenditure.

During the work-from-home season budget items such as travel and hospitality – through which civil servants have traditionally raked in thousands of shillings especially on working trips abroad or in Nairobi and Mombasa – dropped significantly.

For instance, data from the Controller of Budget shows that taxpayers saved Sh7.1 billion on travel and hospitality allowances for civil servants in the six months to September 2020 when the pandemic was at its peak.

In the six months, those allowances dropped 51 per cent to Sh7.396 billion compared with Sh15.306 billion the previous year.

No mileage, sitting allowances

The restrictions on meetings denied civil servants opportunities to boost their wages through perks such as mileage and sitting and subsistence allowances earned from local and foreign travel.

But most civil servants are now back at their workstations after being vaccinated against Covid-19. Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua in August last year ordered them to be vaccinated or risk disciplinary action as the State reintroduced in-station services.

Even with the resumption of in-office work for some civil servants, however, an overall saving of about Sh2 billion was recorded for the entire 2021 amid suppressed travel and in-person events such as conferences.

The financial burden of working from home was also felt by most Kenyan workers.

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics shows that in the seven months from April to October 2020 – coinciding with an upsurge in Covid-19 infections and fatalities – Kenyan families and businesses spent Sh16.29 billion in the first seven months of restrictions to import goods.

The goods included telecommunications equipment such as laptops, smartphones, computers and networking devices to set up remote work stations.

The expenditure in the seven months was Sh7.45 billion compared with Sh8.84 billion reported in a similar period a year earlier, according to KNBS provisional data.

The social-distancing guidelines to stem the spread of the coronavirus, whose first cases in Kenya were reported on March 13, 2020, not only altered workplaces but also the way meetings were conducted.

As a result, companies and workers prioritised investment in IT-enabled infrastructure to facilitate remote working and meetings, a trend corporate executives said is here to stay.

Most corporate meetings and seminars are conducted on video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, and Cisco Webex.

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