Civil servants will no longer be promoted based on the Master’s degree they have acquired, a new government directive states.
According to the Public Service Commission (PSC), reports Business Daily, promotions in the civil service will be measured by competence and experience.
This is a sharp contrast to the private sector where promotions heavily rely on academic success and progress.
In a memo released by PSC chair Stephen Kirogo recently, the government will no longer use a master’s degree as a yardstick for promotion.
“In view of the transitional arrangement, the commission has suspended the requirements of the strategic leadership development programme and Master’s degree as parameters for promotion of public officers to senior position,” stated Mr Kirogo.
He added that “The commission has noted that some of the requirements for promotion may not be facilitating acquisition of the envisioned skill, competencies and attributes required at the higher level.”
However, he noted that any civil servant who holds the position of a director must have a master’s degree as the bare minimum.
This directive comes in the wake of a long-standing culture where many civil servants flock evening classes in different institutions to attain a Master’s degree.
Currently, there are 43, 988 Master’s students according to data by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).
The directive seems to have been informed by an already bloated wage bill as managers in the public sector – most of them masters holders – earn a salary equal to that of managers in the private sector not falling below Sh1 million.
Several audits by the Auditor-General indicate that half of Kenya’s taxes go towards paying salaries to a tune of Sh620 billion per year which has continued to push the wage bill higher.
Kenya’s wage bill is 17 percent above the global average of 35 percent.