GAZETTE NOTICE NO. 261

the following documents/policies— (a) Draft Internship, Recruitment, Training and Sexual Harassment policies which are awaiting public participation. (b) Review of the Human Resource Policy and Procedures Manual. (c) Draft Conflict of Interest Handbook. 8. ADVISE MIGORI COUNTY GOVERNMENT ON HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT The Board did not issue any advisory on human resource management and personnel emoluments during the period under review. 9. ADVISE MIGORI COUNTY GOVERNMENT ON IMPLEMENTATION AND MONITORING OF THE NATIONAL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN MIGORI COUNTY The Board did not issue an advisory on the national performance management system in the county public service. 10. RECOMMENDATIONS TO SRC ON REMUNERATION, PENSIONS AND GRATUITIES FOR MIGORI COUNTY EMPLOYEES The Board wrote to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission requesting for advise as well as forwarding the job description of the position of Director/Secretary, Migori County Revenue Board. CHALLENGES FACED BY THE BOARD IN THE COURSE OF EXECUTING ITS MANDATE (a) Budgetary Constraints: The Board could not implement a number of activities due to budgetary constraints. Further, the mandate and functions of the Board require a significant increase in budget support way above the current allocations. (b) Encroachment of the Board’s Mandate: Notwithstanding the mandate of the Board as enshrined in Section 59 of the County Governments Acts, 2012, some Departments are encroaching on the mandate of the Board. Consequently, budgets are allocated to other Departments resulting in the THE KENYA GAZETTE 7th January, 2026 Board’s inability to perform some of its mandates and functions, such as training. (c) Physical Resource Challenges: Insufficient tools of service like computers, ICT equipment, Wi-Fi and utility vehicles have hindered the Board’s effectiveness in delivering on its mandates. (d) Legal Challenges: The Board continues to face a number of legal hurdles in the process of execution of its duties, through institution of suits against it. (e) Splitting of departments: There were difficulties during the data collection stage after the Board committees discovered instances where some departments had two chief officers with no clear delineation of roles and responsibilities especially on matters pertaining to human resource management. An example of such are the departments of Public Health and Medical Services. (f) Some Departments provided inconsistent data. (g) Budgetary constraints which made it impossible for the Board to assert the accuracy of the information provided through conducting in-depth site visits. The Board thus relied on the information provided by departments. (h) Some departments failed to submit the tools on time, resulting in a setback in the data compilation and analysis process. (i) Lack of centralized human resource and financial data within departments, sub-counties, and municipal boards hampered the data analysis process. (j) Communication Challenges: Communication with the target population was also affected by bureaucracy at the central registry leading to delays in dissemination of correspondences. The Board had to call and send scanned correspondences in some cases to circumvent the challenge. EVALUATION ON IMPLEMENTATION OF THE VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNANCE (a) Good Governance, Transparency and Accountability: Although all the participating departments reported the availability of reviewed organograms, the County Government is yet to establish a consolidated, approved organogram as it is awaiting approval from the County Assembly. On succession management, data from the participating Departments on the age distribution of public servants indicate that the age profile in the workforce would still leave room for effective succession management plans across most segments of the county public service. Data on self-reporting by Departments indicated that all Departments across the categories studied had adopted e-procurement. The data could not be verified independently thus the Board will rely on oversight bodies in the future to obtain secondary data. On matters of accountability, at the beginning of the 2024/2025 FY, none of the County Executive Committee Members and County Chief Officers signed performance contracts with the Governor as required. (b) Professionalism and Ethics in the Public Service: This principle and value was assessed on the basis of four indicators namely – availability of key policy documents on ethics at the disposal of the accounting officers, availability of training budgets, number of staff trained, membership to professional bodies and declaration of income, assets and liabilities. All these indicators recorded average level of compliance. (c) Provisioning for Diversity: This principle was assessed by indicators that exclusively focused on the reported number of employees in the departments that participated in the survey. The number of employees who are of Luo ethnic background stands at 70.6% which represents a majority. This can be attributed to the fact that the Luo is the dominant tribe in the county and that most of the staff were inherited at the inception of devolution. Notwithstanding, the county has included minority communities such as the Maasai, Kenyan Asian, Kenyan Arab, and Orma in the service. On gender representation, 56% staff in the county public service are men with 44% being women. The percentage of disabled staff in the county is still much lower than the constitutional threshold. (d) Fair Competition and Merit in Appointments and Promotions: Levels of compliance with fair competition and merit in appointments and promotions in the public service are evaluated on the basis of three indicators - fair competition and merit, advertisement of job vacancies and representation in appointments. All these indicators were evaluated from the Board’s database and reported as being fully compliant. (e) Efficient, Effective and Economic Use of Resources: The efficient, effective and economic use of resources by staff in public service is one of the best strategies of enhancing national development. All departmental budgets were in line with the county integrated development plan for 2023-2027. Regarding the indicator of budget absorption, departments performed well on the recurrent side but poorly on the development side. Another indicator in this area was allocative budget efficiency and utilization. A majority of the departments fell short of meeting the recommended ratios for both recurrent-to-development expenditure and personnel emoluments-to-operations-and-maintenance. (f) Sustainable Development: The theme of sustainability was evaluated by assessment of the pending bills as a percentage of the total allocated budget for all the evaluated departments. Findings indicate that only two (2) departments namely; ICT (5%) and Governance &Administration (8%) came close to the required threshold on zero pending bills. This can be attributed to delays in exchequer releases from the National Treasury leading to delays in the procurement process. (g) Responsive, Prompt, Impartial and Equitable Service: Under this, the evaluation findings on the responsive, prompt, impartial, and equitable service are presented. The variables around which data was collected included the uptake of ICT in service delivery, documentation of service charters, grievance handling procedures and mechanisms for receiving feedback. These were treated as the indicators of responsiveness, promptness, impartiality and equity in provision of public service. The findings indicate that there was a 45% rate in automation of services, a decline from the previous year’s report. However, this data is inconsistent and cannot be accurately relied upon. (h) Public Participation in Policy Formulation and Implementation: From the findings, 98% of the departments acknowledged the presence of a Public Participation Policy document. This policy, developed by the Department of Public Service Management and Devolution, serves as the framework for organizing public participation forums within the county public service. This is an improvement from last year’s evaluation that reported 55%. Accordingly, findings indicate that 35% of the departments, led by the Department of Lands & Physical Planning, and Governance, conducted public participation fora. However, thirteen out of the twenty departments did not conduct public participation forum. (i) Upholding Human Rights: The Constitution's Bill of Rights asserts that all Kenyans have equal entitlements to human rights. Consequently, compliance of the public service to this requirement was evaluated. Indicators included the development and implementation of grievance handling procedures, as well as instances of human rights violations within the public service. It was observed, however, that only the Departments of Gender and Inclusivity, and County Attorney reported six (6) and one (1) case respectively. (j) Devolution and Sharing of Power: This evaluation aimed to gauge the extent of devolution and power-sharing by assessing three indicators: the participation of departments in joint committees with entities outside the county government (low), the percentage of officers deployed to sub-counties and wards (high, indicating compliance with devolution requirements) and the number of community projects completed during the review period (low percentage). The Department of Environment reported to have completed 85 projects in the period under review which is the leading 7th January, 2026 THE KENYA GAZETTE number, followed by the Department of Medical Services which completed 22 projects in the same period. PROPOSED INTERVENTIONS IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NATIONAL VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC SERVICE In order to ensure that the values and principles evaluated in this report are implemented effectively, the Board commits to undertake the following— (a) Create avenues for the general public to engage the board and give feedback on the implementation of the values and principles. (b) Develop a reward and sanctions policy geared towards rewarding officers who promote the values and sanctioning those that contravene the same. (c) Liaise with stakeholders like the County Assembly to seek meaningful partnerships towards the entrenchment of the values in the public service. (d) Organize quarterly sensitization meetings with Chief Officers and other senior county staff on implementation of values in the public service. (e) Organize training for board members and staff by the public service commission in order to build the capacity of the board to perform their role with regard to the implementation of values and principles. (f) Prepare an annual work plan outlining all activities to be carried out towards the implementation of the values and budgeting for the same. (g) Prepare and implement a county employment equity plan for purposes of eliminating ethnic imbalance (h) Publish and distribute handbooks on values and principles to all staff to increase awareness. ANDREW O. OCHOLA, Secretary/CEO Migori County Public Service Board.