County Public Service Board Opens Up On Recruitment Process
Updated on: Aug 17, 2020
The ongoing reforms in the Laikipia county public service have entered a critical phase with the recruitment of 17 new sub-county and ward administrators.
There has been injection of fresh blood in the department of public administration, too, to fill skills gaps that existed. These include two senior legal officers, one clerical legal officer and five senior assistant directors.
In addition to merit as the basis for selection, the law requires diversity balancing as follows: (a) Under the Constitution:(i) ensuring that no more than two thirds of appointees are from the same gender; and, (ii) [for progressive implementation], target to have at least 5% of appointees being persons living with disability; (b) Pursuant to the County Governments Act [CGA], ensuring that of the appointees at entry level, not more than 70% are from the dominant ethnic community in the county.
Sometimes, implementation of this may not be feasible for certain recruitments due to a number of reasons:
(i) the number of vacancies (for example when recruiting two officers)
(ii) the cadre/nature of work (for example the majority of qualified nurses are female while the inverse is true for say, plant operators) and
(iii) the number of qualified applicants (selection is limited to/can only be done from the pool of qualified applicants, thus for instance, if there are no pool of qualified male applicants for a particular vacancy, none will be picked).
This last factor is in part the reason why there have been no persons with disability selected in a number of recruitment exercises. Due to these factors, the board aims to ensure that the balance is achieved over the course of the year.
Relationships between candidates and officers in the government have never been a parameter to consider in the recruitment. Such information is not part of the information required from applicants.
The only relationship of which disclosure is required is only between candidates and any board member. Upon the disclosure of the applicable conflict of interest rules are applied and followed.
There has been injection of fresh blood in the department of public administration, too, to fill skills gaps that existed. These include two senior legal officers, one clerical legal officer and five senior assistant directors.
In addition to merit as the basis for selection, the law requires diversity balancing as follows: (a) Under the Constitution:(i) ensuring that no more than two thirds of appointees are from the same gender; and, (ii) [for progressive implementation], target to have at least 5% of appointees being persons living with disability; (b) Pursuant to the County Governments Act [CGA], ensuring that of the appointees at entry level, not more than 70% are from the dominant ethnic community in the county.
Sometimes, implementation of this may not be feasible for certain recruitments due to a number of reasons:
(i) the number of vacancies (for example when recruiting two officers)
(ii) the cadre/nature of work (for example the majority of qualified nurses are female while the inverse is true for say, plant operators) and
(iii) the number of qualified applicants (selection is limited to/can only be done from the pool of qualified applicants, thus for instance, if there are no pool of qualified male applicants for a particular vacancy, none will be picked).
This last factor is in part the reason why there have been no persons with disability selected in a number of recruitment exercises. Due to these factors, the board aims to ensure that the balance is achieved over the course of the year.
Relationships between candidates and officers in the government have never been a parameter to consider in the recruitment. Such information is not part of the information required from applicants.
The only relationship of which disclosure is required is only between candidates and any board member. Upon the disclosure of the applicable conflict of interest rules are applied and followed.
