The nominee for the position of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) chairperson Sammy Chepkwony is worth Sh251 million.
Mr Chepkwony, a human resources expert with over 30 years of experience, told Parliament that his net worth comprises of assets accumulated from employment income, land, homes, vehicles and shares in various companies.
He said his fringe payments have been included in the declared income and does not expect anything more.
Mr Chepkwony appeared before the National Assembly’s Labour and Social Welfare Committee which vetted him and six other members of the SRC.
President William Ruto nominated Chepkwony who has held senior roles across major organisations such as Kenya Airways, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), and Aga Khan University to take over from Lyn Mengich whose tenure expired in September 2024.
Until his appointment, Mr Chepkwony was the chief executive officer of People Centric Management Limited.
“I developed an entire public sector salary and remuneration structure for the entire East African Community. I recently helped develop the remuneration structure for the entire police service and the Prisons Service,” Mr Chepkwony told the vetting panel led by Runyenjes MP Muchangi Karemba.
“I have also worked in the tea and mining sector on the Human Resources practices. More recently I have been a human resources director at Kenya Airways and made sure the airline stays afloat.”
Mr Chepkwony told MPs that his academic qualifications include a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Nairobi, as well as professional certifications as a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP).
The Constitution establishes the SRC with the mandate of setting salaries for public officers to ensure fiscal sustainability. Members serve for a six-year, non-renewable term.
Dr Ruto appointed Mr Chepkwony alongside six other members of the commission to replace Ms Lynn Mengich, whose six-year tenure ended in September.
The new SRC Commissioners include Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Martin Kizito Ong’onyi, Mohamed Aden Abdi representing county governments, and other representatives from TSC, APSEA, FKE, and COTU.
Those vetted included Major Gen (Rtd) Ong’onyi, Adan Abdi, Jane Gatakaa Njage, Leonid Ashindu, Gildea Odera and Geofrey Apollo Omondi as members of the SRC.
The new SRC leadership faces the challenge of balancing fair compensation for public servants with Kenya’s economic reality, a delicate task amid rising inflation and public demands for transparency in wage policy.
“We need SRC to be a full-time commission so that it can implement its mandate. There is still a lot of work for SRC to do to align the public sector wage bill,” Mr Chepkwony said.
“The mandate of the SRC has not been achieved. In my view, it is not time to make SRC a part-time commission. There is a lot of work for the commissioners to be done.”
On his development for the Human Resources sector, Mr Chepkwony said the SRC will have to consider what the country is trying to achieve in terms of the bottom-up economic agenda.
Mr Chepkwony told the vetting panel that agriculture, affordable housing, digital superhighway and universal healthcare are key pillars to economic revival.
He said the reward system of public officers should be directly linked with the pillars enumerated in the bottom-up economic pillars.
“We must ensure that public officers are aligned to the economic pillars. We need to transform micro and small enterprises to have a lot of Kenyans employed in this sector,” he said.
“We need a lot of people to be employed in the public and private sector to enable the Kenya Revenue Authority to collect enough money and have the country grow economically.”
If approved, Mr Chepkwony will succeed Lyn Mengich, the outgoing chairperson of the commission.
Mengich assumed office in August 2018, meaning her six-year non-renewable term has expired.
SRC nominee Leonid Ashindu told the committee that SRC should be retained as a full-time commission as per the SRC strategic plan for 2019 to 2028.
“Before we achieve 35 percent of the gross domestic product to the ratio of employment, there is a need to retain SRC as a full-time commission,” Mr Ashindu said.
While responding to a question on a Bill that seeks to make SRC commissioners serve on a part-time basis, Mr Ashindu, the nominee of the Association of Professional Societies in East Africa (APSEA) said there currently exists a lot of job unrest in the country that require a full-time basis commission.
