Civil Service Reform Policy in Kenya: A Review of the Retrenchment Strategy

Abstract

One of the key priorities of Kenya's economic recovery strategy is to reform the civil service to make it lean, efficient and sustainable in terms of its cost to the exchequer. Civil service retrenchment is a key component of the civil service reforms started in 1993. The goal of the civil service reforms is to improve the quality of public service, reduce government expenditure, raise productivity of the civil service and enhance optimisation in civil service staffing. Although there seems to be a national consensus on the need to reform the civil service to make it more responsive to the needs of the society, the same cannot be said of the retrenchment strategy. While external development agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have supported the civil service staff reduction strategy, local stakeholders such as trade unions and other civil society organizations have expressed strong opposition to the intervention.