Assessing the Level of Compliance of County Governments With the Core Constitutional Recruitment Provisions: the Case of North Eastern Counties in Kenya

Abstract

The human resource is a key requirement for every organization to achieve its objectives of organizational development. With rapidly changing demographics, globalization and realignment of legislation in most countries, human resource management in all sectors regardless whether in developed or developing world has been affected. More specifically, legislation is nowadays used as a vehicle to manage gender inclusion, disability and ethnic balance in recruitment of new employees. To honor the constitutional provisions, public institutions are undergoing various reforms to present it as being compliant with public interests in conformity with the dictates with the new law. This paper aims at assessing the extent to which North Eastern county governments are complying with the core constitutional recruitment provisions on gender balance, representation of the disabled people, and incorporation of various ethnic groups during recruitment of various county officials and to determine factors that explain compliance/ non-compliance with these constitutional provisions in the newly established North Eastern counties. The study used mixed research design. The population of the study consisted of members of County Public Service Boards in the three counties, majority and minority leaders, County Secretaries, representatives of Maendeleo ya Wanawake and People Living with Disability and members of the non-dominant ethnic communities. This study applied purposive sampling technique to select respondents in this study. Both primary and secondary data was collected. The study relied on both qualitative and quantitative data. The study found there were low rate of representation of persons from non-dominant ethnic communities and people living with disability, however, the respective counties have demonstrated progressive compliance with the gender balance rule. The study concluded that even though compliance with the three constitutional provisions may not have been met altogether, the County Governments have demonstrated improved measures to attain them. The study recommends that counties should establish the ratio of dominant and non-dominant ethnic group so as to ensure that the non-dominant groups are fully considered for relevant job opportunities. The study also recommends that, counties should carry out sensitization and public awareness programs aimed at reducing stereotypes and retrogressive cultural beliefs so as to enhance employment opportunities for people representing the different segments of the society.