The Public Sector Wage Policy Study

Abstract

This Policy discusses the growth of public sector employment in Kenya from independence to the early 1990s, highlighting how civil service employment increased by 4.4% annually, while public employment in other sectors grew by 6.4% annually. However, this expansion created a burden on the budget, making it impossible to compensate public servants and provide the necessary resources for service delivery. To address this issue, the Civil Service Reform Programme was implemented in the 1990s, which reduced central government employment to 194,000 by the end of 2003. However, the reduction was not accompanied by an overall wage policy, resulting in distortions in wages between different services and an increase in wage demands since the NARC Government came into power.