Migori county government gave a one-day extension to allow more than over 200 workers who did not turn up for a headcount to clearthir names and weed out ghost workers.
County Public Service Executive Caleb Opondi said they extended the deadline with a day on January 6 after an earlier week-outoutlong exercise was carried out late last year.
For a week ending December 23, the county gave about 3,000 workers for a headcount and the review is still ongoing.
“We had others who said they were on leave, sick or claimed they never heard of the exercise. We gave them a second chance as this will be the last day,” Opondi said.
During his campaigns, Governor Ochillo Ayacko who took over from Okoth Obado who retired after his two terms, pledged to clean the payroll and weed out ghost workers.
“We had about 200 workers who never bothered to turn up during the exercise several decided to bring police abstracts of their lost academic and professional certificates instead of official receipts from the examination body,” Opondi said.
He said the Friday one-day extension was to give them a chance of fair hearing and to defend themselves.
He said last month they had a physical count and verified the hiring process. Analysis of certificates given have been gaining momentum to include contacting the Kenya National Examination Council and universities and colleges.
“We will clean the payroll, we already found out those who retired, died or might have moved to other jobs still getting paid,” he said.
While addressing the press in his office on Friday, Opondi said the process may take two more months after verification and culprits will face legal action decided by the law and county cabinet.
Staffs working in the county government have been asked to provide their letters of appointment, promotion, deployment, confirmation of appointment, and payment vouchers, identification cards, passports, birth certificates and academic papers.
According to the governor, the county lost Sh60 million to ghost workers. He said people were employed to unbudgeted positions that did not exist,
This was after he received an audit report from the Institute of Human Resource Management which indicated that the county had about 607 ghost workers on its payroll.
The audit on the payroll showed a disparity of Sh120m in a month and in another jumping to more than Sh200m.
In September, the governor gave a warning shot to the ghost workers who were earning without working.
He said he was shocked to find names of non-employees on the county’s payroll system.
The governor had placed the weeding-out of ghost workers as his first priority when he got into office in late August.
(Edited by V. Graham)
