Kisii Governor Simba Arati lifted the lid on the actual number of ghost workers who were drawing salaries without rendering services to his county government.
In a statement on Wednesday, February 15, Arati announced that he was able to identify non-existing staff after they failed to report for their work positions for two months.
He further noted that after his investigation, he came up with shocking revelations that had led to a bloated payroll.
“I have received a report on the Staff Audit for employees of the Kisii County Executive, an exercise I commissioned three months ago one, conducted by the Institute of Human Resource Management (IHRM).
Out of the 5,600 workforce, 1314 are ghost workers who failed to turn up for the two-month headcount. Between January and August 2022, the county payroll strangely shot up by over Ksh600M among other shocking discoveries,” he stated in a statement.
The county boss noted that his findings would lead to smooth operations in the county.
“The recommendations will help us address emerging staffing, and remuneration challenges among others which, will enable us, to have in place a sound County Public Service team,” he emphasized.
On November 29, 2022, Arati asked for Ksh10 million from the county’s supplementary budget to verify the academic certificates of county employees and weed out the ghost workers.
He lamented that most county employees provided fake academic papers when he subjected them to a headcount at the start of his tenure.
According to the County Public Service Board, the county had 5,900 employees, who Arati claimed did to meet the requisite qualifications.
“I know it will be difficult. The funds will be used for certificate verification.
We will need to obtain the correct grades that they received,” Arati announced while defending the outrageous amount.
On September 3, 2022, Simba Arati announced that preliminary investigations showed that the county had 813 ghost workers.
