Nandi county has rolled out a census of its workers to establish the accurate number of its workforce.
County secretary Francis Sang told the Star yesterday that the one-week exercise targets to establish the workers’ qualifications and rid the payroll of all ghost workers.
“We want to ensure that our payroll is clean and put everyone on the right place as per their qualifications and professionalism,” Sang said.
The move comes after the expiry of contracts of some employees inherited by governor Stephen Sang from the previous administration led by Cleophas Lagat.
Sang, however, said that the exercise had nothing to do with the expiry of contracts.
“It’s an administration issue as we want to improve service delivery to the residents of Nandi,” the secretary said.
The county has over 3,200 workers in its devolved system most of whom are in the ministries of Health, Agriculture and Revenue department.
The workers have been required to produce, among other things, academic and professional certificates, and copies of their national identity cards and letters of appointments.
Workers devolved from the defunct local authorities have expressed fears of their fate as most of them earn huge salaries with lower qualifications.
However, the county secretary said no one was being targeted but the move was aimed at correcting and ensuring the right placement of workers to align the skills towards achieving governor Sang’s Big Four agenda.
“We want this to be under the rapid results initiative because our executives and chief officers have signed performance contracts and are now waiting for the results,” Sang said.
In February, the county reinstated all casuals suspended and gave them one-year contracts.
Governor Sang said a task force instituted to establish the number of casuals found only 311 were genuine while 300 were ghost workers.
He said the renewal of staff contracts will depend on their performance and directed all employees to sign performance contracts.
Sang dismissed claims of an increase in the county wage bill.
The g overnor said most of the workers had served the county for three to 15 years, without being considered for permanent employment. He ordered the service board to put all casuals on one-year contracts.