Regular audits will rid the country of ghost workers

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.