Five communities control over 70 percent of the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), it has now emerged.

Documents tabled before the Senate National Cohesion and Equal Opportunities Committee revealed in addition to the government parastatals being ethnically imbalanced, the majority of the staff are aging staff.

NSSF Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Koross told Senators over 60 percent of the working force are aged between 50 and 60 years with the last massive employment recruitment having been conducted in 1996.

“We have an aging workforce and its something we want to address by ensuring in our recruitment we will be more biased to the young people by also considering the ethnic balance,” stated Koross.

The NSSF CEO mentioned plans have been instituted to ensure a balanced workforce is prioritized in the next recruitment

“We are facing a risk of people with a lot of knowledge having invested a lot on them and this knowledge not being passed on to the incoming generation,” said Koross.

Submission before the Senate Committee chaired by Marsabit Senator Mohammed Chute shows that Kalenjin Community has the highest representation in the workforce at 18.24 percent which translates to 199 members of staff out of 1,091.

Kamba Community comes in second with 17.51 percent (191), Luo Community is the third highest with 13.38 percent (146), and Luyha community follows closely at 12.47 percent which translates to 136 staff.

Kikuyu Community holds 12.47 percent of the workforce at the state agency amounting to 135 members of staff.

The other 44 ethnic groups share the remaining 26.03 percent of positions with only 22 communities making it on the list.

The Constitution and the National Cohesion and Integration Act of 2008 require that all public entities seek to represent the diversity of the people of Kenya in hiring staff and that no public establishment shall have more than one-third of its staff from the same ethnic community.

Under the diversity policy for State Ministries, Departments, and Agencies released in December 2015 by the Public Service Commission, ethnic groups whose job representation surpasses their corresponding national population proportion are considered to be over-represented.

The diversity policy was expected to tackle the problem of over-representation by setting hiring quotas for ethnic groups and disadvantaged classes such as the disabled.

The Constitution introduced the ethnic representation requirements to check a historical trend where the tribesmen of those in power were favoured during recruitment. By Irene Mwangi, Capital News