City Hall full of old people, report says

Half of the employees at the Nairobi County Government will retire in the next ten years, a report has revealed.

The Biometric Card Registration report that was released on Wednesday by County Secretary Leboo Morintat shows that out of a total registered 11,603 employees (6,118 female and 5,485 male), 5,709 workers are above age 50.

The recommended retirement age is 60.

The number of staff between ages 50 and 54 are 2,978, those between 55 to 59 number 2,712, while there are 19 individuals over 60 years.

The workers between ages 30 and 49 are 5,723 while only 131 employees are below the age of 30.

The report was commissioned by Governor Mike Sonko in April this year and was aimed at weeding out ghost workers and eradicating imposters pretending to be Nairobi County employees.

It was also expected to assist in the public verification of county workers and centralisation of employee services through an employee self-service module.

“The registration was necessitated by various complaints from the public on impersonation of county employees by unknown persons and inability of county employees to identify themselves both within and outside the county premises,” reads the report.

Biometric registration

City Hall’s payroll as of April this year indicated that there were 11,988 employees, but the figure dropped by 385 following the conclusion of the biometric registration exercise four months later.

The report, however, indicates that out of the unregistered workers, 200 had retired between April and November while another 85 were engaged in training overseas.

It further indicates that 58 officers were serving suspensions over disciplinary issues while 23 employees had died. Another 11 employees had resigned during the period under review.

“Employees serving suspensions or facing court cases and dismissals are largely the ones that were involved in the irregular issuance of approvals in the planning department without following due process,” said director of communication Elkanah Jacob.

The report has been released amid nationwide calls for the retirement age to be lowered from 60 to 50 in an attempt to create jobs for the youth.

Starehe MP Charles Njagua has tabled a motion in Parliament that would see about 25,000 civil servants sent home if his plan succeeds.

Meanwhile, residents can now authenticate the identities of City Hall workers after they were issued with unique identification numbers that they will display as part of their uniform.

Members of the public are required to send the personal identification number to short code number 40471 and if the individual is a county employee, an SMS will be sent with the person's bio-data and a URL link to their digital information complete with a photo.

If the individual is not a county employee, the SMS will indicate so. Residents have been urged to report such cases through the provided hotline number 0725-624-489.