Officers who employed ghost workers in Govt charged

More than 50 public servants have been suspended and charged in court for being architects of the 12,500 ghost workers detected in the government payroll after a November audit revealed billions of losses through fictitious salaries.

Devolution secretary Anne Waiguru said last week the accused had been suspended and are facing multiple charges including those of falsifying documents in a scam that cost taxpayers about Sh7.2 billion annually.

The ghost workers were discovered after a fresh registration of all government employees that ended in October last year, prompting investigations by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

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“There have been prosecutions. There are about 50 or so cases of officers in court. The people who were found culpable have been taken to court,” Ms Waiguru said. “The perpetrators charged are all government employees working in both ministries and counties.”

An inter-governmental committee responsible for the vetting said 160,012 employees were listed out of the targeted 175,522 public servants, leaving 12,510 uncounted for. An earlier audit unearthed that the government burns millions monthly in salaries for workers who were non-existent, dead, retired or sacked, but were still retained in the ballooning State payroll.

Those involved in the scam are said to have substituted names of dead or retired employees with those of their cronies, who received the money. They had allegedly taken advantage of the outdated IT system that has not kept pace with developments in modern finance to ensure theft of public money goes undetected.

The fresh registration was launched last September.

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