Anxiety as EACC starts probing employment scandal

Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission(EACC) Head Office in Nairobi. [File, Standard]

The Ethics and Anticorruption Commission has launched a probe into an alleged irregular hiring of over 500 healthcare workers by the Siaya County government.

According to EACC's Nyanza regional manager, Abraham Kemboi, the commission is investigating alleged bribery, abuse of office, and irregular recruitment by the officials of the Siaya County Public Service Board following reports of unauthorised employment.

"Unscrupulous officials of the Siaya County public service board lied to many Kenyans. They were supposed to employ about 120 employees, but because of corruption, some employees of the board allegedly took bribes to issue letters in excess of 300 to unsuspecting Kenyans."Kemboi said.

He claimed that the devolved unit had made a formal request to recruit approximately 100 healthcare personnel to fill staffing gaps and replace retiring staff of the health department.

The commission believes some officials exploited the request and engaged in unauthorized recruitment, driven by bribery from job seekers.

According to the commission, unsuspecting candidates allegedly paid bribes ranging 
between Sh300,000 and Sh350,000 in exchange for employment letters.

At the end of the fraudulent recruitment process, about 500 healthcare personnel were issued employment letters as opposed to 120 personnel who were supposed to be selected from the list of applicants.

"These Kenyans have been reporting to work assuming that their payments would be operationalized and therefore earn a salary, but to their surprise, this has not happened. They have come to a painful realization that they were duped into thinking that they had genuine employment letters," he stated.

EACC has now called on the victims of the fraud to cooperate with the commission during the investigation process. He assured the victims of protection, saying that the commission mainly targets to get hold of the board officials who orchestrated the scam as a way of curbing corruption in the public service employment process.

"We want to request those affected Kenyans to support the commission. Come with those employment letters. We want to know who was the originator of those employment letters." Kemboi said.

Efforts to get a comment from the devolved unit were futile.