Governors Call for Govt Intervention After Delays in December Salaries

The Council of Governors has called on the government to intervene and resolve issues that have resulted in delays in processing December salaries for county government workers.

In a letter dated Friday, December 20, and addressed to Public Service Principal Secretary Amos Gathecha, the governors urged the PS to rectify the inconsistencies arising from the mass data update.

In particular, the county administrators urged Gathecha to clearly explain workers’ leaves and allowances payable to them annually following the upgrade in the payroll system.

While addressing the PS, the county bosses also called on him to sort out the challenges on the Pay As You Earn (PAYE), the Housing levy and the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) as recently outlined by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

Similarly, Gathecha was told to sort out the system errors that reportedly resulted in huge PAYE deductions during the processing of employees’ salaries.

According to the governors, the above issues resulted in the inability of the county governments to process the payroll thus causing delays in the disbursement of December 2024 salaries.

Further, Gathecha was compelled to look into the system errors that resulted in some of the government officers missing the county payrolls.

“The purpose of this letter therefore is to request the State Department for Public Service to fast-track and resolve the above issues and any other errors in the system to enable smooth payment of the salaries for county staff,” read the letter in part.

On November 28, the government announced the upgrading of the workers’ payroll system from the old manual Integrated Personal Payroll Database (IPPD) to the Human Resource Information System (HRIS).

In a memo directed to all government department heads, the Ministry of Public Service announced that the upgrade would affect all ministries, departments, and agencies. 

While conveying the message, the government stated that all civil servants would face November salary delays caused by the system upgrade with the Ministry of Public Service urging Kenyans to exercise patience.

“This is to bring to your attention that there is a delay in processing the November 2024 salary. Kindly bring this information to all officers under your supervision,” the memo read in part.