The Ministry of Health has launched the staff head count to eliminate ghost workers in the health ministry.
The Principal Secretary (PS) State Department for Medical Services, Harry Kimutai, who led the inauguration of the exercise at Afya House grounds on Thursday, said the aim of the head count is to enable the department to know the exact number of staff it has for purposes of cleaning the payroll system and removing ghost workers.
Kimutai said that the matter of undertaking the exercise had been discussed at a senior management meeting and passed by the ministry for effective service delivery.
The PS noted that all members of staff will be required to submit their documents within a period of seven-days, failure to which after 30 days, the employees will receive a suspension letter and thereafter go through the disciplinary process.
“Tell your colleagues, wherever they are, that if they don’t submit their paperwork to be aligned with their files by the end of this month, we will stop their salary until they come,” cautioned the PS.
Kimutai added, “Those who fail to submit their papers for verification will be deemed to have absconded duty, more so those on strike.”
“This is an exercise that has been sanctioned by the public service, so as to verify our certificates with either the National Examination Council, universities and colleges that we went through,” he said.
“I want you people to take this exercise very seriously, we are already done with the team that is in Mathare,” he urged.
Kimutai announced at the same time that within the next seven-days, when the headcount exercise takes place, staff will be deployed to various counties where there is inadequate staff.
He observed that some employees are overburdened with a lot of work, whereas there are colleagues who are earning salaries and are using their working hours to run their own errands.
“We need to allocate duties according to the establishment so that other employees are not overburdened,” the PS stated.
The PS noted that the ministry has been shouldering the burden of paying officers who are on the payroll salaries, yet they are working for Non-governmental organisations and earning allowances, adding that a total of 1000 employees who are supposed to be in the State Department for Medical Services are not seen at their places of work.
“Immediately we are done with this exercise, and before we get approval from Public Service to advertise the vacant positions, we will realign the heads of divisions and the heads of directorate according to staff establishment and suitability that we would have done on assessment,” said the PS.
By Sharon Atieno
