Nakuru County on the spot over illegal hiring of clerks

The Nakuru County Public Service Board and Public Service Management Board are on the spot over irregular employment of 116 workers between January and November last year.

The Standard on Sunday has established that the workers, many of them clerical staff and administrative officers, were employed without the approval of the County Assembly.

Following the revelations, the county assembly has formed an ad hoc committee to investigate the activities of a board official and some senior officers in the Executive. The committee, chaired by Ndundori MCA Stephen Kihara, began work last week and called on members of the public to submit their petitions.

“You are aware of Article 10 and 232 of the Constitution and the requirements of part VII of the County Government Act and the Standing Orders of the house. We need to give members of the public an opportunity to take part in this process,” Kihara said.

There has been an outcry over the ballooning county wage bill that stands at Sh5.250 billion, which some leaders want investigated.

Senator James Mungai has demanded that a special forensic audit of all staff be conducted within the next two months and the report made public.

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Documents obtained by The Standard on Sunday show that each of the illegally hired staff earns monthly basic salaries of between Sh40,000 and Sh100,000, which members of the county assembly never budgeted for.

Last month, the assembly recommended the sacking of 36 administrative officers employed by the board without their approval.

The MCAs adopted the report of another committee that had recommended that the workers be sacked after it found out that the board violated the law.

It was after deliberating and adopting the report by the committee chaired by Ezekiah Kariuki, the Njoro MCA, that the house proposed the formation of the ad hoc committee to probe the activities of the public service board. Minority Leader Dan Ambale said the employment scam at the county was much bigger than what the Kariuki committee had unearthed and called for further investigation of the board’s activities.“We require an immediate audit of the county staff because the number of illegally employed staff could be much higher than what has been unearthed,” he said.

In the past three years, the county wage bill has soared at an alarming level — from Sh2.1 billion in the 2013/14 financial year to the current Sh5.25 billion.

A review of the county payroll done between January and November last year showed huge discrepancies from month to month, which at first was dismissed by officials as normal.

But a further scrutiny of the payroll by a committee of the assembly probing cases of illegal employment, revealed substantial variations of the payroll that implied the executive recruited additional staff without a budget, knowledge and approval of the county assembly.

Among those said to be unlawfully employed were 21 senior clerical officers hired on May 1, 2015 and 12 ward administrators employed on August 1, 2015. On September 1, 2015, 22 more clerical officers were illegally added to the county’s payroll.

The assembly report notes that between September 2 and 10, three more ward administrators, 10 senior clerical officers and eight land surveyors assistants were recruited. On November 2, the Lands department recruited 13 more land surveyor assistants, 14 messengers and 12 survey porters.

A probe by the MCAs revealed that those involved allegedly pocketed between Sh100,000 and Sh300,000 from job seekers.

A letter dated March 11 and addressed to the acting Chief Officer, Lands, Housing and Physical Planning, Victor Ndereba, by the board Secretary James Mbugua claims that the department illegally recruited 36 officers on November 2, 2015 and put them on the payroll.

In the letter, Mr Mbugua informed Ndereba of glaring discrepancies in the department’s payroll that had 36 new staff instead of 15 who were recruited by the board on September 17, 2015.

That letter followed one that was sent to the board by the Chief Officer-Finance and Economic Planning, Torome Kapaya, on March 4. The letter had asked the County Treasury to stop salaries of the 36 illegal employees with effect from February 22