Opinion and Analysis
A building under construction on Kenyatta Avenue in Nakuru. The number
of developers seeking building permits has increased. PHOTO | FILE
By BUSINESS DAILY
In November last year, more than 12,500 civil
servants were struck off the government payroll after they failed to
list afresh during a two-month registration exercise that was aimed at
weeding out ghost workers.
The headcount — which was launched by President Uhuru
Kenyatta on September 1 and targeted ministry staff, county workers and
parastatal employees — was meant to establish whether staff records in
the payroll system were a true reflection of the workers who turned up
for the vetting exercise.
Last week, Devolution and Planning secretary Anne
Waiguru revealed that more than 50 public servants have been suspended
and charged in court for being the architects of a scam that must surely
rank up there with the Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing scandals.
The amount mentioned as having been lost is Sh600
million in salaries and allowances every month. That is Sh7.2 billion
annually for God knows how many years when the remuneration of
non-existent, dead, retired or sacked workers was paid into the accounts
of unscrupulous public officials.
With the huge numbers involved, it’s not easy to
keep such a huge scam under wraps for a long time. Hence there must have
been multiple crimes of commission and omission committed.
Corrupt officials have an uncanny sixth sense that
enables them to sniff out any mischief their fellow fraudulent
colleagues might be getting up to. Over time, these unethical workers
must have formed a large network to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted ride
on this taxpayers-funded gravy train.
The complexity of pulling off such a scam must be
immense, and we hope the officers assigned from the Directorate of
Criminal Investigations to this case did a lot of deep digging that
would help reveal other individuals in the periphery who aided in
identity theft and manipulation at, say, the National Registration
Bureau, or even rotten bank officials who helped divert or withdraw
funds.
This type of crime, which is cleverly pitched by
its perpetrators as victimless, is like a fast spreading, aggressive
cancer. Any civil servants who were party to the nefarious goings-on and
have escaped the dragnet to bring them to justice will always seek out
or create loopholes to continue with their plundering ways – just like a
cancerous cell.
The national and county governments can prevent
such metastasis by holding annual audits for the next five years. Only
then can the public body be even considered cleansed.
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