A Nakuru politician now wants the Public service commission (PSC) to take charge of the deployment of staff across all the 47 counties.
According to Erick Ogada, recruitment of staff in counties has been messed up with Governors who he said hire staff with little regard to the requirements of the law.
He observed that Governors recruit people based on how close they are related to them or on how they helped them during the campaigns but not bases on competence.
Ogada observed that allowing PSC to hire and deploy staff within counties will enhance professionalism and bring to an end the habit of county employees serving under the mercies of Governors.
“The PSC should be mandated with the responsibility of hiring and deploying staff to all the counties in the country to ensure that we have the right people being hired to deliver services to the tax payer,” he said.
He added “Currently no county staff can go against the wishes of the Governor and this has contributed to the increased cases of corruption in counties”.
The United Green Movement party Director of grassroots democracy observed that all chef officers, Directors and other senior officers within counties should be hired by the PSC with Governors only left to hire junior staff like clerks.
“When we have these people being hired by the PSC, they will answerable to the hiring body and they can then have the boldness of rejecting any ill directions from the Governors,” he said.
He said that allowing PSC to deploy county staff will also help in giving the counties the face of Kenya and delaing with the issue of tribal counties.
“I would love to see a Turkana being deployed to Kisumu to work there and a Luo being sent to Turkana because that is the Kenya we want,” he noted.
At the same time Ogada wants a change of the law to allow chairpersons of committees within the county assemblies to serve as county executives.
According to him, allowing county executives to come from within the county assemblies will enhance efficiency and accountability in counties.
He opposed the idea of scrapping off the position of Deputy Governors as proposed by the Punguza mzigo bill proponents saying that, the move will have little economic impact to both the counties and the country.
Ogada instead wants the scrapping of all CeC positions whose functions will then be given to committee chairpersons within the county assemblies who will be paid an extra allowance for the extra duties.
“What we need to do is to do way with the 470 CeC positions in the country and give their responsibilities to MCA’s who will be paid not a salary but only an allowance for performing the duties of CeC’s,” he said.
He added “We are going to save nothing by doing away with 47 Deputy Governors but we can save a lot by doing away with all the 470 CeC’s in the country”.