An audit report has revealed that Elgeyo Marakwet County has 112 ghost workers gobbling billions in salaries, exposing the rot in devolved units.
The audit conducted by the Institute of Human Resource Management has exposed how individuals received regular salaries and other perks despite not being on the county's official payroll.
Receiving the report, Governor Wisley Rotich stated that the devolved unit is working on cleaning the payroll and weeding out avenues that former officials used to siphon billions paid out as salaries.
“The way forward is that we will have an implementation committee of this report. This will enable us to interrogate things further,” the governor explained.
The Governor remarked that the 112 alleged ghost workers missed at an event attended by a majority of county employees.
Further, the workers also missed the headcount during the audit process.
“The immediate thing is that I will instruct payroll to stop salary processing so that they produce themselves.
“This is because if you cannot come and present yourself for an audit, it is impossible that you can be working for the county,” Rotich stated while implementing a series of measures to address the issue and ensure taxpayer funds are no longer squandered.
Ghost workers pose a significant challenge for counties grappling with unsustainable wage bills and misappropriation of funds.
An audit in Kisii by the Institute of Human Resource Management (IHRM) on February 2023 revealed that the county had 1,314 ghost workers and was losing Ksh600 million in salaries.
Similarly, an audit report conducted in Kitui in March 2023 revealed that the Julius Malombe-led County had 935 ghost workers, with 326 of the total number employed under permanent and pensionable terms.
In January 2023, Kiambu and West Pokot counties lost Ksh1.4 billion and Ksh1 billion, respectively, to ghost workers.
Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga, on February 8, 2023, also unearthed a number of ghost workers employed as rat catchers.
