Kenyan Newspapers Review: SRC to Increase Salaries for Civil Servants
On Friday, July 25, the Kenyan newspapers reported that the Salaries and Remuneration Commission is set to review salaries for civil servants.
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The dailies also delved into an alleged scandal involving the Ministry of Education, where ghost schools allegedly received millions of shillings, despite the government's assertion that free education is unsustainable.
Source: UGC
1. Daily Nation
The Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), which had promised to assess government employees' salaries to protect them from punitive deductions on their monthly payslips, has scheduled a pay review.
SRC chairperson Sammy Chepkwony disclosed this information during a meeting with the National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
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This came after Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu's report highlighted non-compliance with the one-third basic pay rule in the Employment Act.
The committee questioned the SRC chair regarding government actions to safeguard civil servants whose take-home pay had dropped below the legal minimum after tax adjustments that reduced their earnings.
"We are actively working to ensure that the one-third basic pay rule is followed. The fourth remuneration review cycle, which is underway, aims to address this," Chepkwony revealed.
2. The Star
The Ministry of Education is embroiled in a new multimillion-shilling scandal following the discovery that Jogoo House cartels allegedly transferred millions of shillings from the KSh 1.3 billion infrastructure fund to ghost schools.
Source: Twitter
The infrastructure fund is used for upgrading buildings, classrooms, libraries, labs and providing schools with the tools they need, like technology and educational materials.
Members of Parliament (MPs) confronted Education Cabinet Secretary (CS) Julius Ogamba on Thursday, July 24, after learning of an alleged conspiracy by a group of dishonest bureaucrats and rogue ministry staff to establish fake schools.
Dick Maungu, the MP for Luanda, presented the committee with a list of four schools, two of which had no existence at all and were each given KSh 50 million to upgrade their facilities.
The non-existent schools were Bomet High School and Kamuret Secondary School.
Despite their existence, the other two secondary schools, Olbutyo Boys and Olbutyo Girls, are very close to one another, which raises concerns about fairness.
Maungu further alleged that the powerful cartels at the education ministry altered the list of schools approved by Parliament and inserted non-existent institutions.
3. The Standard
President William Ruto has been given the green light by the court to proceed with the construction of the KSh 1.2 billion church at State House, Nairobi.
The court scheduled two cases contesting the construction to be heard on September 22, 2025, without granting orders to halt the construction.
This was after Attorney General Dorcas Oduor argued that the constitutional court lacked jurisdiction to hear a land use dispute.
Her lawyer, Emmanuel Bitta, asserted that the Lands Court should hear the case.
According to attorney Levi Munyeri, Ruto acknowledged that he was constructing a church that could accommodate 8,000 people.
However, he contended that the project should have been open to competitive bidding and subject to public participation.
4. People Daily
Lawmakers were taken aback when National Treasury CS John Mbadi and his Ministry of Education counterpart Migos Ogamba acknowledged that the nation's Free Primary and Day Secondary Education programmes are no longer viable due to a lack of funding.
Millions of students' hopes were further shattered when the pair acknowledged that the government would not be able to cover the approximately KSh 9 billion in exam costs going forward.
The two also portended doom for universities when they appeared before MPs who sit on the Education Committee to discuss the state of funding for the sector.
They said that the government would be taking steps like staff layoffs, closing satellite campuses, and outsourcing non-core services to save the institutions that risk collapsing.
5. Taifa Leo
The state-funded policing watchdog has revealed that the police used disproportionate force during recent protests, killing 65 people.
The authority also noted 342 civilian injuries and 171 police officer injuries in its monitoring report.
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) revealed in a report issued on Thursday that the majority of the deadly gunshots went unreported by the police.
During the demonstrations on June 12, 17, and 25, as well as July 7, the authority noted it witnessed significant breaches of constitutional policing standards, including a lack of professionalism.
IPOA sent out teams to keep an eye on the demonstrations in response to the death of blogger Albert Ojwang, the Saba Saba anniversary, and the 2024 Gen Z protests commemoration.
Proofreading by Mercy Nyambura, copy editor at TUKO.co.ke.
Source: TUKO.co.ke
