The government has announced measures to get rid of ghost workers from its payroll.
Ghost workers is a term used to refer to persons who earn salaries without being employed.
Public Service Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria announced the moves will streamline the employment sector and save the government against losses amounting to billions of shillings each year.
This will be achieved through the biometric register that the CS says will be rolled out soon from the national government to the county government.
“We are paying ghost civil servants, ghost teachers. We are spending capital on ghost students. We are sending cash transfers to ghost elderly citizens. As we accelerate our prayers to exorcise ghosts, the Ministry of Public Service will embark on biometric registration of all the 900,000 of us who are paid by the taxpayers including counties,” CS Kuria said.
He also said his ministry is planning to do an audit of the civil servants’ payroll.
According to the CS, the country is facing a big challenge in dealing with ghost workers, despite being a religious country.
“As a country that is very religious, we are not doing very well in chasing away ghosts. This country is full of ghosts.”
This comes barely a month after the revelation by the Public Service Commission (PSC) that there were over 2,000 cases of forgery of academic papers and qualifications in the public sector.
The commission stated that most of the people were in possession of doctored academic papers, which they used to secure jobs, and promotions in the government offices.
According to the PSC Chairperson Ambassador Anthony Mwaniki Muchiri, the Ministry of Interior was leading with many cases of forgery followed by the Geothermal Department in the Ministry of Energy.
Other government institutions with staff with fake academic papers include the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication, Kenya Film Classification Board, Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, and Kenyatta National Hospital, among others.
