A damning report by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has revealed that employment in all 47 counties is skewed in favour of majority ethnic communities with Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luhya and Luo leading in that order.
Despite ten years of devolution, more than 80percent of employment in all the 47 counties are taken up by only ten tribes with Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luhya and Luo leading.
"The study findings reveal that 10 communities dominate the county public service that is, Kalenjin 15.45%, Kikuyu 15.40%, Luhya 13.00%, Luo 9.15%, Kamba 8.73%, Kisii 7.50%, Mijikenda 5.08%, Meru 4.78%, Somali 4.31%, and Maasai 4.00%," the report indicated.
"On the other hand, only four minority ethnic groups are the most represented in counties: mainly, Somali 4.31%, Maasai 4.00%, Turkana 1.92% and Taita1.56%."
The report dubbed Ethnic and Diversity Audit of the County Public Service 2023 established that the number of counties embracing ethnic diversification in job enrollment has dropped significantly to 13 this year, down from 21 in 2016.
Only 13 out of 47 counties have complied with the national recruitment policy.
Bomet County tops the list of non-compliant counties with Kalenjin, which is the dominant tribe accounting for 3268 out of 3357 of its staff, representing 97%. Kisii community comes a distant second with just 26 employees.
Political interference
Nairobi County leads in terms of diversity in its workforce with 38 communities represented among its employees.
The report noted that political interference, budgetary constraints, favoritism, laxity by oversight organs, staff inheritance, lack of clear framework for county employment and unprofessionalism are among the reasons for non-compliance.
"Will NCIC continue to be perceived a toothless dog? Will NCIC continue to watch counties execute ethnic discriminatory appointments? We invite members of the public to call upon us, we will go to court and invite EACC to block illegal appointments," NCIC Vice Chair Wambui Nyutu explained.
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County government employment is skewed in favour of the governor’s ethnic community as most counties share the same ethnic community composition as the governor.
The study established that majority of counties (85.10%) have similar ethnic groups at the governor level, management and the county’s dominant ethnic group.
In terms of gender, county governments have more female employees than males.
The total workforce in the 47 devolved units stands at 184876, with females accounting for 53 percent while employees with disability total 2089, representing 1.14 percent.
Nairobi county has the highest number of county government employees at 13,513, representing 7.37% of all county employees.