The government’s new staff-scoring portal went live at 09:00 on Tuesday and, before lunch, had flagged 18,642 employees as failing to meet performance standards. Payroll officials held salary payments for 14,206 of them, according to a tally released by the finance ministry, turning a planned reform launch into an unprecedented public-service pay crisis.
The ministry said the mistake affected staff in 31 ministries and agencies, from clerks to district health administrators. The National Public Employees Union says its review of past payroll records found no previous single-day hold on so many public workers; the government has not disputed that comparison.
- Portal opened at 09:00 on 20 October
- 18,642 workers were incorrectly flagged
- 14,206 salary payments were held
- Parliament’s public administration committee will meet on Thursday
Blank scores became zero
The portal, called the Public Service Scorecard, was meant to replace annual paper appraisals with monthly reviews. Its launch-day error treated a blank supervisor rating as a zero, then passed that score to the payroll system as a failure. Civil servants trying to enter ratings were met with repeated time-outs, according to the ministry’s technical summary.
“A missing mark became a verdict, and the system acted on it before anyone could stop it,” said Kamini Sekhon, head of the fictional Public Service Performance Authority. She told reporters the agency had approved a reversal of every affected hold and would suspend the scoring function until a fresh test was complete.
A missing mark became a verdict, and the system acted on it before anyone could stop it.
Kamini Sekhon, Public Service Performance Authority
By 18:00, 6,400 payments had been restored, the finance ministry said. The remaining cases were queued for correction, with the delayed money expected to reach workers’ accounts by Friday. That assurance did little to calm staff who had watched their status change from “eligible” to “hold” on phone screens during the working day.
Anger reaches parliament
Bartek Krupa, secretary of the National Public Employees Union, said workers in rural offices were especially exposed because many had no supervisor available to confirm ratings before the portal closed its first submission window. “They announced a modern system and then made people pay for its first test,” he said. The union has asked for compensation for bank charges and late rent payments.
The public administration committee of parliament has summoned Sekhon and Cabinet Secretary Barlas Akan-Çörekçi for a hearing on Thursday. Committee chair Jaime Bustamante-Mendoza said members would demand the launch checklist, the number of systems tested before release and a clear account of who authorised the payroll link. The government says no employee has lost their job as a result of the error.
In Nairobi’s central government offices, the launch had been presented as a major efficiency drive: officials said regular scoring would identify training needs and help managers reward strong performance. Critics had warned that departments lacked enough trained supervisors to make monthly reviews reliable. Tuesday’s failure has turned that concern into an immediate test of whether the system can be trusted at all.
The authority says it will reopen ratings only after a new trial with 2,000 volunteer staff and a separate payroll check. Sekhon said the full national rollout would not resume before parliament’s hearing. For thousands of workers, the first measure of the reform is now simpler: whether the salary that was due this week arrives intact.
