Ghost workers still haunt counties a year after election

Ghost workers in counties are still a challenge despite new governors promising to deal with the problem.

Upon swearing in after last year’s elections, at least 25 governors promised to audit staff and exorcise ghost workers drawing salaries from counties.

The Homa Bay County payroll and personnel census audit report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers released last week, one year since Governor Gladys Wanga’s election, revealed a massive loss of public funds.

The first phase of the Homa Bay payroll and personnel census audit report reveals the devolved unit has more than 1,780 ghost workers.

In the report, at least 556 individuals failed to present any appointment letters or other key employment documents while 479 people were found to be earning salaries that cannot be traced by the county’s human resource department.

About 322 people lacked appropriate academic qualifications and/or licensing by professional bodies.

“We are starting to implement the report recommendations forthwith to establish an efficient and effective public service,” Wanga said.

Lawyer Dennis Onyango told People Daily that counties must weed out ghost workers from their payrolls in order to reduce the wage bill.  He, however, warned that the process should be undertaken professionally.

“When we analyse reports by the auditors from a legal perspective, we are then able to see if the alleged ghost workers have been removed from the payroll procedurally or not,” he said.

Fictional

According to Onyango, a ghost worker is one who is listed in the payroll system but does not work for the county government.

“Ghost workers on payroll may be a real person who, knowingly or not, is put on a payroll, or a fictional person invented by a fraudster,” he explains.

Most audit reports on counties have seen county payrolls having underage, overage, backdated jobs, inherited employment and illegal staff.

In most cases, rogue officials fake the paperwork and authorisations to add a worker to the payroll.

The issue of ghost workers has been a hot potato for governors.

In a past crackdown, the Kenya County Government Workers Union accused some governors of scheming to replace people hired by their predecessors to create room to employ their cronies.