Two senior employees of Nyamira County Government were on Friday arrested and charged with 11 counts, including abuse of office.

Godfrey Kiriago and Geofrey Nyamagwa, had been on Nyamira DCI Paul Makonge’s radar over allegations that they had irregularly hired two people to work for the county government.

The charge sheet stated that on October 1, 2021, at their county offices, and being persons employed in public service at Nyamira County as human resource and payroll manager respectively, they jointly with another person not before the court abused the authority of their offices by arbitrarily hiring Fred Nyakango and Joshua Kipkoech as civil engineer and senior inspector respectively. They then illegally added the two to the list of employees recruited by the Nyamira County Public Service Board.

False document

In the second count, the two were accused of making a false document contrary to section 357(a) of the penal code.

The prosecution told the court that two committed the offence on the diverse dates between October 4, 2021 and unknown dates in October 2022 at Nyamira County government offices.

Kiriago was also charged that on October 4, 2021, while at his county government office, he made a false document, namely a list of 15 names of recruited staff for Department of Environment,Water, Mining and Natural resources purporting the list to have originated from NCPD and signed by the chairman Peter Kereri, a fact he knew was untrue and false.

The two were also charged with conspiracy to defraud contrary to section 317 of the penal code . They allegedly conspired with intent to defraud and  indeed stole a sum of Sh1.5 million from the county government of Nyamira. The two who appeared before the  area  resident magistrate  Briany Okongo  denied all the  charges and were  each released on a cash bail of Sh1 million  or a bond of Sh2 million with a surety of the same amount.