In its
efforts to curb the wage bill, which seems inflating, the County government of
Laikipia has sent home 176 workers.
Speaking on
Wednesday, the interim County Secretary Mr. Karanja Njora stated how county
officials risked jail term for failure to honour the Public Finance Management
Act 2012 rule, stating that wage bill should not exceed 35%.
Those who
have been sacked were reportedly served with a general redundancy notice dated
January 8, 2020.
"To
this effect, the board has identified 176 employees whose positions will no
longer be tenable, employees occupying them are not gainfully engaged,"
stated Mr. Njora.
Laikipia
County reportedly parts away with Sh190.8 million on a monthly basis, money
meant for county employees' salary alone.
A staff
audit carried out between June and August 2019 revealed how some workers were
being paid, yet they could not showcase what they were being paid for.
According
to the County Public Service Board chair Ms. Mumbi Mwago, "failure for
some members of staff to appear for audit simply meant that they are ghost
workers and do not deserve to be on the payroll."
The audit
exercise required that the members of staff appear in person before the
committee, armed with their academic papers.
Two hundred
fifty-four workers were nabbed for lack of academic documents, with ten others
aged between 20-24 years. The County Boss H.E Nderitu Muriithi revealed that
the country was keen on tracking down ghost workers.
"Now
that we have this audit report out, we will be able to know who is working and
who is not. We will remove both ghost and idle workers," governor Muriithi
told his cabinet during a January meeting.
The county
has been attempting to have its operations streamlined via the introduction of
a system demanding all workers to fill weekly sheets based on approved work
plans. In 2019, H.E Muriithi sacked off 62 medics who had been on strike for over
21 days.