Another shocker to civil servants as the daily meal allowance withdrawn
Civil servants will again lose their daily meal allowance in a restructuring process being done by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission(SRC)
Civil servants will again lose their daily meal allowance in a restructuring process being done by the Salaries and Remuneration Commission(SRC).
After the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) warned against such reimbursements, civil servants who receive daily subsistence allowance (DSA) while on assignment away from their workstations will no longer get meal stipends.
Officers who travel on official business inside the country but are not compelled to spend the night away from their duty station are currently eligible to receive a meal allowance.
Civil servants, however, have misused the system by collecting billions of shillings in lunch allowance in addition to the DSA each year, which amounts to a double payment.
To stem the wastage of taxpayer funds, the SRC has now recommended that civil servants on assignment outside their workstations only draw either of the allowances.
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“Consequently, SRC advises that: meal allowance will only be paid to officers traveling on duty within the country but who are not required to spend a night away from the regular duty station where ordinarily DSA would be payable. Meal allowance will not be paid alongside DSA,” the commission said.
Aiming to reduce the desire for double payments while on assignment away from the office, the SRC recently revised meal allowance rates for federal officials.
Depending on their work classification, civil servants will receive a breakfast allowance between Sh300 and Sh1,500 under the revised rates.
The payout for lunch and or dinner has been set at between Sh600 and Sh3,000 subject to one’s job ranking.
“This circular supersedes the circular Ref. No: MSPS/18/2A/ (89) dated 12 November 2009 on payment of meal allowance and any other circulars/guidelines previously issued to the public service on the matter,” SRC said.
The new meal allowance rate card is an improvement from the current terms where civil servants in Job Group P-R, for example, draw Sh750 for breakfast and Sh1,500 for meals.
The SRC is currently restructuring allowances for civil servants with a target to save up to Sh100 billion annually through the merger of some payouts or the elimination of repetitive ones.
The commission has already recommended the abolishment of retreat allowance, sitting allowance for institutional internal committee members, task force allowance and non-practice allowance saying they are tantamount to double payment.
The SRC verdict came five months after the commission chairperson, Lyn Mengich, said a review of the allowances policy would be ready by the end of this year, paving way for trimming public workers’ juicy allowances and saving taxpayer funds.
Currently, there are over 247 remunerative and facilitative allowances payable within the public service, up from 31 in 1999, straining the national bill through double payments. Besides trimming allowances, the SRC targets to cap allowances at a maximum of 40 percent of a public worker’s gross pay.
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