Noose tightens on public staff in perks racket

Public officers who have been defrauding taxpayers billions of shillings through illegal allowances and exaggerated salaries could be in for a rude shock after the anti-graft agency and the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) inked a deal to prevent the vice.

The Ethic and Anti-Corruption Commission Chairman, Rev Eliud Wabukala, and chief executive officer Twalib Mbarak, hosted SRC chairperson Lyn Mengich and CEO Anne Gitau at Integrity Centre where they signed a memorandum of understanding to curb fraud and weed out ghost workers in public service.

The MoU will see the two-institutions exchange information to nab and prosecute public officers earning above the rates set by the agency and unqualified people who secure government employment. 

It will also probe public appointments and run a preventive programme through advisories. Also in the spotlight will be government officers who claim imprests and reimbursements for trips and work they did not undertake.

According to Wabukala, although the two institutions have been working together, the MoU offers a structured way of collaboration in ensuring accountability, openness and efficiency in service delivery.

In the deal, SRC will provide the commission with details of emerging fraud cases related to public employment and salaries. It will also be part of prosecution witnesses.

“The EACC will continue with its mandate of wealth training, which will be enhanced by this memorandum of understanding because we need evidence from areas where SRC has the capacity. We shall benefit from the guidelines that SRC has set and they may form the basis of the recovery of wealth,” Wabukala said.

The SRC has a mandate of setting, reviewing and advising national and county governments on remuneration and benefits of all public officers, in line with the Public Finance Management Act. 

But on several occasions, the commission has complained of non-compliance with the Act, leading to a bloated wage bill and misuse of public funds.

At some point, the SRC threatened to abolish allowances that cause civil servants and Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) to misuse funds after revelations of frivolous expenditure by public service officials and MCAs, leading to a ballooning public wage bill.

Mengich said: “We have a lot in common that we have agreed to collaborate on, specifically on the Public Finance Management Act, which deals with prudent management of public resources. We issue advisories from time to time and sometimes there are cases of non-compliance and so, with EACC, we can collaborate in that area as well as on prevention.”

Twalib said the MoU will focus on exchange of information, since there is critical information SRC can give EACC, and vice versa, especially on issues of ethics and leadership. He added that the collaboration will see SRC volunteer information and testimony to build EACC cases in court.

“We will also be addressing the issue of cheats, which is very common in the public sector and in both levels of government where we hear MCAs receive allowances for non-existent trips.

In the national and county governments, you hear of people being employed yet they lack the requisite qualifications. When SRC comes across this information, EACC will work on it in terms of enforcement and prevention,” Twalib said.

He added: “ We want SRC to support the provision of witnesses, whether through physical evidence or appearance in court, to support what we are pursuing.” 

For instance, imprests and travel allowances have emerged as avenues for theft by public officers. Whereas imprests have been provided for by law to enable public officers withdraw up to ShI million to finance urgent matters like travel and payments to private facilities that had been pre-qualified to facilitate urgent activities, government officials have turned them into avenues for plunder. 

Fresh reports by Auditor General Nancy Gathungu’s reports for the 2019-2020 financial year have exposed massive irregularities in the handling of imprests by regional governments.

Gathungu says that close to one billion shillings meant for travel to meetings and other expenditures may have been stolen.

Besides the audit reports, Twalib says the anti-graft agency has been investigating several cases where cash advances in counties have become avenues for theft, saying “people have been collecting imprests as if it is pocket money” while others have been drawing illegal allowances.

“Investigations are underway involving people who signed for imprests yet did not surrender them to justify the expenditure, or where officers took money yet the work they claim to have used it on did not even exist. We also have instances where people took per diems but did not spend the stated days,” Twalib said.