Nairobi — President William Ruto’s pick to fix the country’s public service, Mr Justin Muturi, has vowed to revamp the government’s internship programme to cover State agencies and the private sector.
Muturi, the Cabinet Secretary for Public Service and Human Capital Development, called for more transparency on hiring for government jobs, efficient service delivery, and urgent recognition and reward scheme for diligent public servants.
MPs asked Muturi to step in and address the corruption, tribalism, poor service delivery, career stagnation, low morale due to delayed promotions, and poor succession planning in the public service.
“This is a thorn in the entire gamut of public service. There’s a lot of opaqueness,” said Muturi about the hiring, and vowed to work to clean up the lethargy in government offices..
He told MPs that he will not abolish the permanent and pensionable terms for public servants to allow for the uninterrupted delivery of public services and the stability of government more so during political transitions.
“A nation’s public service has to be a blend of permanent and pensionable staff; contractual; advisory and even consultancy terms. We are about efficiency. We must insulate the public service from the public from the vagaries of political transitions,” said Muturi.
He cited the political turmoil in Italy, Britain, and Israel that did not significantly affect the public service.
The internship programme is one route through which the government can train young people for the job market, Muturi said. However, as it is, it was poorly designed and narrowly implemented.
“This programme should be reworked, relooked and re-engineered to involve the private sector,” said Muturi. “The private sector should be incentivised to take interns”.
He added: “If we take this route without reengineering the programme, we will just be creating more anger for the country. We must think about this programme collaboratively.”
Lawmakers Naisula Lesuuda (Samburu West) and Mary Emaase (Teso South) told Muturi that it was urgent for the public service to find jobs for the interns, because many had gone through the programme, but were now jobless in the streets.
“The young people are asking us to make a provision for them to gain full employment after internship. If that is not there, the government and other entities will just be enjoying free labour,” said Lesuuda, who has sponsored a bill on State internships.
Muturi said urgent reforms were needed to obtain the relevant skills needed for efficient service delivery when hiring for government jobs.
“We need to have strategic delegation and collaboration. We cannot have one office in Nairobi, recruiting for every government agency in the country. It is plain inefficiency,” said Muturi, referring to the Public Service Commission.
He gave an example of the Public Service Commission appointing 11 drivers and posting them to the State Law Office, only for it to turn out that only a handful of them could actually drive.
Muturi said he will hold the public servants to a higher standard in all public agencies including universities, public hospitals, police stations, and all public offices to offer services promptly, efficiently, with dignity, with respect and “with a smile”.
“We have very good service charters, missions, and visions, but these are rarely implemented,” he said.
He vowed to hold bosses of public agencies to account for failures within their dockets.
“We can’t have a Constitution to which we just pay lip service. We just have to implement the Constitution. Everybody else in the public service should also be held accountable,” noted Muturi.
Muturi, the outgoing Attorney General, also told the Committee on Appointments said he resigned on 11 July 2024 prior to Ruto firing his whole Cabinet. He did so to give the president the opportunity to rework his administration.
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