Kenya Announces Pay Cuts To State Officials Including President

Top state officers in Kenya to undergo salaries and allowances cut to help the country reduce wage bill and improve government service delivery.

The authorities announced the pay cut on Thursday saying salary of the Kenyan president will be cut by 13% to 17.3 million Kenyan shillings a year and there will be a cut 12.5% to around 7.5 million shillings for legislators.

Under the new move the government will not pay or reimburse special benefits to the officers. The allowances for attending parliament will also come to an end.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has long been calling for such pay cuts citing threat of destroy to the country’s development agenda.

With the pay cuts the country could save about 8.853 billion shillings, said the Commission, which came into effect in 2013.

The pay of legislators was increased before 2013 leading to protests and members of parliament called as “MPigs” while the parliament was termed by protestors as “piggy bank.”

The pay cuts is learned to come into effect after the August elections and to remain as the same until 2022, when the next elections will be held.

The officers in defense, police, navy and intelligent chiefs too will come under the pay tax move.

Several other African countries have highly-paid elected officials and Nigeria is ahead of Kenya where lawmakers earn as much as $160,000 in terms of salaries, perks and allowance.