SRC Civil Servants Salaries: There will be no salary increment for teachers over the next two years. This is according to the Salary and Remuneration Commission.

“There will be no review of the basic salary structures, allowances and benefits paid in the public sector in the financial year 2021/22 – 2022/23,” said Lyn Mengich, the SRC chairperson at a briefing yesterday.

This also means that civil servants will also not get any pay raise. The freezing of pay increments follows a directive from the IMF that demanded that Kenya must freeze salary increments as part of conditions to get a loan.

National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani gave an undertaking to the IMF to gradually reduce the ratio of the government wage bill to GDP by about 0.5 percentage points by FY2023/24.

“This will be accomplished through continued restraint in hiring and wage awards, including the 4-year wage agreement that will come into effect in FY2021/22 and by improved wage-bill management,” said Yatani in a letter of intent to IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva.

However, teachers have disputed the decision saying that it is invalid. “The only relevant Kenyan figures in the release indicate that our economy is projected to grow by 6.6 per cent in 2021. Moreover, the commission is purporting to block all salary reviews when as a matter of fact some cadres in the civil service have been accorded salary and allowance increments in the current financial year,” said Akelo Misori, secretary general Kenya Union of Post Primary Education Teachers (Kuppet).

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KNUT on the other hand said the government was provoking teachers to strike. “SRC recommended Sh. 33 billion for teachers starting next July and that is what stands,” Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion said. “Freezing salaries is very provocative and one that was likely to cause unrest in the labour sector.”