County workers missed out on a Sh4.77 billion salary increase that would have seen each of them take home an average extra annual pay of Sh21,081 in the year to June 2025 as governors cited lack of cash to implement a Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) decision.
SRC approved extra pay for the 226,500 county government employees alongside approvals for national government workers who took home an extra Sh38.4 billion.
During the year to June 2025, the commission received 289 in total requests for pay increments valued at Sh70.9 billion, but only approved reviews valued at Sh43.19 billion.
The Sh4.7 billion salary increments approved for the county employees was part of the Sh43.19 billion that SRC approved across the public service during the year, SRC documents show.
With county government employees hitting 226,500 last year, implementation of the review would have seen each of them take home an average Sh1,756 extra monthly, or Sh21,081 over the entire year.
Governors, however, want the National Treasury to increase counties’ equitable share of revenues for counties to implement the salary review, arguing that the SRC decision only benefitted national government employees.
“The national government implemented a salary review [in the 2024/25 fiscal year] for all its employees. However, this was not effected for the county government workers due to non-allocation of resources by the National Treasury. The total amount required cumulatively is Sh4,774,942,082 all County state and public officers,” said Council of Governors (CoG) Chairman Ahmed Abdullahi in separate disclosures.
“The Council demands for an increase in the Equitable share to facilitate the implementation of salary reviews for County workers as required by the law,” he added.
Implementation of the salary review, however, is set to raise counties’ wage bill further and will see them spend close to half of their revenues on salaries and allowances alone, further breaching a legal requirement prohibiting spending more than 35 percent of revenues on salaries.
Counties spent Sh223.77 billion on salaries and allowances in the year to June, which was a Sh13.9 billion increase from the Sh209.8 billion wage bill the previous year.
Adding the Sh4.77 billion would take counties’ wage bill to Sh228.5 billion which would be 48.2 percent of their revenues.
This would worsen the situation from the year to June 2024 when the wage bill consumed 43.4 percent of counties’ revenues.
“The wage bill expenditure in FY 2024/2025 is also observed to assume an upward trend, rising from Sh38.69 billion in the first quarter, to Sh63.63 billion in the second quarter, but drop slightly to Sh52.62 billion in the third quarter, then rise to the projected Sh68.83 billion in the fourth quarter,” SRC says in the latest wage bill report.
SRC is also currently in the process of reviewing remuneration and benefits structures in the public service to cover the period running from July 2025 to June 2029, which is expected to have further implications on the wage bill.
Counties’ wage bill has risen by 29.8 percent (Sh52.5 billion) over the past five years, as the number of county employees rose by 21,900 over the same period.
The wage bill went up from Sh176 billion in 2020/21 to Sh228.5 billion under the new review, as workers increased from 204,600 to 226,500, SRC documents show.
