The Civil Service is dominated by four communities who take up more than half of all the jobs, a new government report has revealed. Members of the Kikuyu community lead the pack, followed by their counterparts from the Kalenjin, Luhya and Kamba communities. Together, they control 58 per cent of the workforce in government ministries, departments and agencies. However, the report, dated December 2014, says that new appointments in the last financial year were done in a manner that ensured ethnic balance. The report was the product of a survey conducted in 168 agencies with a workforce of 94,286. READ : THREE TRIBES TAKE HALF OF ALL PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS “Ethnicity is normally one of the criteria we use when hiring. We want to ensure that all communities are fairly represented,” Prof Margaret Kobia, the chairperson of the Public Service Commission, told Nation in a telephone interview. Prof Kobia said the report will give the Public Service Commission baseline guidelines that will help it to reduce the gaps to ensure that the public service has a national face. “We can see the gains we have made in reducing the gap in ethnic representation,” she said. The report is the first informed by research and will be useful to scholars, public servants and Kenyans who want to understand the civil service. It reveals that members of the Kikuyu community had the highest number of employees at 21,567, accounting for 22.9 per cent of the total workforce. Although there are about six million people from the community — who form 17 per cent of Kenya’s population according to the 2009 census figures — the study said the community was over-represented by 5.5 per cent. Members of the Kalenjin community, who have 12,082 jobs in the surveyed departments, were also over- represented by 1.57 per cent. They form 12.8 per cent of total government workforce. The Luhya community was third with 11,487 civil servants, representing 12.2 per cent of the workforce. Although it was one of the communities with the highest number of workers in government, it was, however, under- represented by 1.78 per cent based on its members’ proportion to the national population, which stands at 14 per cent. The report ranked the Kamba community fourth, with 1,0321 employees. This translated to an over- representation of 0.76 per cent. TRIBALISM AND HISTORICAL REASONS “Taking the size of Kenya’s ethnic groups in the national population into account, the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Kisii and Embu have a fairly large representation relative to their population,” it says. Prof Kobia attributed the trend to tribalism and historical reasons, but said the government had put in place measures to ensure the public service reflects the face of Kenya. In the 2013/2014 financial year, 2,211 people were employed in various government agencies. Of these, 1,424 were male while 787 were female. ADVERTISEMENT Whereas this met the one- third gender requirement, individuals from the Kalenjin community secured 454 government jobs followed by those from the Kikuyu community who got 412, 404 from the Luhya and 381 from the Luo communities. The Kamba and Kisii communities had more than 100 people hired with 161 and 145 respectively. Education, according to the report, was one of the factors that continue to lock out minorities from civil service jobs. “It should be noted that employment is a function of, among other factors, skill, knowledge and literacy, which, in progression towards compliance, will slow down equal representation among the minorities unless they improve their low literacy skills,” the report said. According to the data, the Somali community has the highest deficit in the public service at 4.4 per cent followed by the Turkana at 2.2 per cent and the Luhya at 1.8 per cent. There are 1,751 government workers of Somali origin in the civil service and 384 from the Turkana community. Others who are under- represented include the Meru with a workforce of 3,815 which translated to an under-represen
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 04:07:38 +0000
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