President William Ruto has rejected a recent proposal by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) to raise salaries for top government officials.
President Ruto poured cold water on the proposal on Friday at the KICC during the launch of digital government services, claiming that the wage disparity between low-wage public servants and high-wage earners is enormous and should be narrowed.
As a result, he rejected the proposal to raise salaries for the President, Deputy President, Cabinet Secretaries, Members of Parliament, and other senior officials.
Instead, the Head of State stated that he had directed the SRC to devise methods to standardise salaries for government officials in accordance with international standards.
“For other State officers, myself, my deputy, ministers, PSs na wale wadosi wengine wa Bunge, sisi mambo yetu tungojee tafadhali. Hiyo mshahara itakwama hapo,” he said.
“I have instructed the SRC to give us international best practices because we need to reduce the gap between all of us who work for the people of Kenya. We need to make sure that the gap between the person paid the least and the person paid the most is not too big because we are all workers.”
According to the President, it is unjust for one public official to be paid 100 times more than another in the same government, and the commission should work to strike a balance.
“It is not possible that the people at the top earn 100 times more than the people at the bottom. It is not right because we live in the same country, we buy the same food, we go to the same shop,” he noted.
“I have told SRC that there is an international compression formula…until they come back to me, the salaries will have to wait.”
The SRC proposal, which has since sparked public outrage, sought to raise the President’s salary from Ksh.1,433,750 to Ksh.1,650,000, and that of the Deputy President from Ksh.1,227,188 to Ksh.1,402,500.
President Ruto, on the other hand, approved a similar proposal by SRC to raise the salaries of lower-level civil servants by 7-10% beginning July 1, 2023.
