Dead workers ‘still getting salaries’

By Stanley Mwahanga

Mombasa, Kenya: Some of the workers in the Mombasa County government’s payroll are dead or their contracts were terminated while others have not been remitting tax.

According to the report by Ernst & Young, the number of employees has been fluctuating with the payroll for 2013 having risen by at least 200 employees, 83 of them becoming deceased within months.

In the payroll for January last year provided by the county government, the number of employees stood at 2,520 compared to the full list provided in June which captured 2,763 workers.

This is besides only 60 employees indicated as having been employed from February to May 2013 and 16 who left during the same time.

The shocking report captured at least eight employees with non-active, employment status whose contracts were terminated.

The report pointed out that there have been sharp increases in the workers’ salaries with some of the increments rising by more than 246 per cent while some had their salaries reviewed upwards twice in a span of three months.

All those who were employees as at January last year, except eight, got salary increases the following year.

The eight, who did not get an increase in February, had their pay increased in April last year, states the report.

The report also shows that at least 40 employees inherited by the county government from the defunct Mombasa Municipal Council have been evading taxes after it emerged that their tax documents had discrepancies. This is besides the 212 ghost workers unearthed who have been earning a salary illegally without remitting taxes.

According to the audit report, employees from the county government have been robbing the government by exempting themselves from being taxed.

The rot was discovered during the vetting exercise and where some were found to lack Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), which is mandatory for one to be tax compliant.

Not eligible

At least 25 persons were employed before they were of employment age revealing they were earning a salary without possessing an identity card and were then not eligible to apply for the KRA PIN.

The report pointed out that some of the employees who turned up for vetting late July last year, in the exercise to weed out ghost workers, presented invalid pin numbers.

Some of the workers’ PIN numbers did not match the names provided meaning they were using fake addresses or names.

“We treated as concerns instances where employees did not have PINs, presented invalid PINs or whose PINs did not match the names provided,” states the report. “Checks were performed using the KRA online PIN-checkers and were found to have invalid pin certificates.”

The report noted that information provided by some of the employees, which was passed through the National Registration Bureau and KRA for verification, showed the anomalies. It was not clear how much those evading taxes were being paid or if they were eligible to pay taxes.

The PINs of 12 other employees were found to have more than the maximum 11 characters, while 11 employees did not submit their PIN certificates and their records did not have any PIN information, showing that they had been escaping tax payment.

“In January to May, the Pay As You Earn tax was not deducted from 28 persons’ salaries,” shows the report.