• Senators have turned to Parliament as they deepen inquiry into public service
• It comes amid uproar over domination of Kikuyus, Kalenjins in public service
Image: FILE
Senators have turned their guns on Parliament as they deepen their inquiry into ethnic composition in public service.
The lawmakers are probing the ethnic composition of parliamentary staff through the Senate’s Committee on National Cohesion, Equal Opportunity and Regional Integration.
“The committee should present a report on the ethnic composition of staff serving on permanent and pensionable terms in the Parliamentary Service Commission,” nominated Senator Miraj Abdillahi said.
Miraj, in a statement on the floor, petitioned the committee to inquire into the PSC and establish whether they adhere to the law on regional balance.
The development comes at a time when the committee chaired by Marsabit Senator Mohamed Chute has questioned several agencies over the ethnic composition of their staff.
There has been an uproar over the skewed ethnic balance in public service, with few communities controlling positions in nearly all the state agencies.
In the petition, Miraj wants the committee to provide information on the recruitments conducted by the commission from 2012 to date.
“The committee should outline the positions that have been filled and the criteria applied in the selection of candidates for each position,” she said.
In addition, the committee will establish the demographic composition of PSC staff, detailing their gender, age distribution and state the percentage of employees with disabilities.
The panel will also outline the measures and policies in place to ensure ethnic balance, inclusivity and equal opportunities for women, the youth, Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) and individuals from marginalised communities within the Commission.
Already, the committee has declared the ethnic imbalance in public service a disaster and has promised a raft of recommendations, including legal changes, to restore order.
“What we have seen so far is a disaster. Certain communities have dominated public service since Independence,” Chute said.
She spoke days after a new report exposed the big ethnic disparities in government jobs, with the Public Service Commission disclosing the imbalance has been compounded by recent non-competitive recruitments.
In its 2023 annual report, the PSC stated that Kikuyus and Kalenjins — the two communities that have held the presidency since independence — are grossly overrepresented in government.
Recent hiring of advisers in Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua's office and by Cabinet Secretaries has further entrenched the disparities, the report says.
“The non-competitive appointments seemed to have compounded the problem of overrepresentation of some communities, which are already overrepresented in the service,” the commission says.
A separate report by MPs released a fortnight ago showed that ethnic-driven hiring remains rampant in state corporations.
The lawmakers blamed political interference for the deep-rooted problem.
The report by the National Assembly National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity Committee has exposed how parastatal bosses have continued to flood the entities with tribesmen and women in total disregard of the law.
“There are significant ethnic imbalances in the composition of employees at various levels, where some ethnic groups are overrepresented while others are underrepresented,” the report reads.