Auditor General reveals 987 ‘ghost workers’ at Nairobi County
The Auditor General has exposed loopholes in the Nairobi County government’s payroll system.
The report on the County Government’s Executive for the financial year 2021/2022, indicates salaries have been paid to workers who do not appear in any books or payroll.
The report states the county had a total of 4,897 employees.
However, this figure differed from the payroll register which showed 5,884 employees, resulting in a discrepancy of 987 employees between the two sets of records.
Management’s explanation for the discrepancy was that the number reflected in their records was based on staff employed by the county and that the additional staff were those seconded by the national government.
The Auditor General said that even with this explanation, the County did not provide her office during the audit with a list of the additional staff seconded to the County by the National Government as claimed.
“In the absence of the list of additional staff, it was not possible to confirm that the nine hundred and eighty-seven (987) staff members were part of the approved staff establishment for the County,” the report reads.
The Auditor General did not reveal the amount of money that the county government has been paying to ghost workers.
In November, when Governor Johnson Sakaja took over the office, he promised to use technology to identify city employees in a bid to weed out imposters and ghost workers.
Also, the report revealed that the review of the staff members list for the month of June 2022 shows that some staff members were promoted to senior positions in the County but their educational or professional skills in the staff list maintained at the Human Resource data records did not match the requirements for the respective positions.
“This may have resulted either from lack of training for the staff members or failure to update their personal files data in the payroll. The Management did not provide evidence to confirm the academic, professional, and experience required for the 2,178.”
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