An audit has established that the Homa Bay County Government may have lost Sh300 million paid to ghost workers over the past years.
The irregular employment of workers was unearthed during a personnel census audit carried out by Price Waterhouse Coopers consultants on November 21 last year.
The report which was handed to Governor Gladys Wanga established that the ghost workers included under age staff with some employed at 16 years of age.
The report which was released to the public by the governor through a media briefing Thursday, revealed that 1,786 ghost workers had been earning salaries from the county payroll.
The report indicated that 556 people did not present any appointment letters or any other authentic employment documents.
The ghost workers included 479 people who are in the payroll, but could not be traced to human resources departmental lists.
Some 287 individuals did appear at all for verification of the workers during the physical counting exercise.
A total of 129 individuals had no files in the county registry. They also did not present any relevant documents during the audit.
There is also another category of 322 individuals who lacked necessary academic qualifications. These included those who lack practice licenses issued by the respective professional bodies they claimed to belong to. They also include people who had fake Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) certificates.
This group also comprised individuals who claimed to have studied in some universities and colleges but when contacted, the institutions dismissed the authenticity of their certificates.
Ten of them were caught while designing and printing fake certificates in cyber cafes in Homa Bay town.
The audit revealed that the workers have been earning salaries totaling to more than Sh300 million annually.
Wanga who was accompanied by her Deputy Oyugi Magwanga, County Secretary Benard Muok and PWC partner Simon Mutinda said they are going to implement recommendations of the report through cleaning the payroll.
The Governor said it was unfortunate for those red flagged to earn public funds irregularly.
She said the implementation of the report will save the county government more than Sh300m annually.
“Our objective is to tame the wage bill and improve efficiency in service delivery by engaging qualified personnel,” Wanga said.
By Davis Langat
