Anxiety as county pays workers through cheques
Kisumu County government on Monday started paying its employees through cheques in efforts to weed out ghost workers from the payroll.
At the same time, Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o’s administration embarked on a headcount exercise as it seeks to eliminate ghost workers from its workforce.
County Secretary Godfrey Kigochi said the exercise targeting all employees will run for between two to four working days and is expected to help the county government come up with accurate data on the legitimate workers.
Kigochi said the employees will receive their salary by cheques until the headcount exercise is concluded, adding that payment will revert back to normal system next month.
He stated that the county had set up five pay-points for the January salaries via cheques, noting each employee pick their own cheques to indicate they are genuine workers.
“The exercise is meant to ensure that all the employees we have in the county are genuine workers. At the end of it we will be able to establish if there are people earning salaries illegally,” Kigochi told People Daily.
He said workers who are out on official duties will be given one week window to be captured in the headcount.
“All heads of departments should ensure services are not interrupted by working on a modality of releasing staff in turns,” he noted.
Governor Nyong’o's communications director Aloice Ager said the exercise will enable the county government understands its workforce and tackle rising wage bill.
“There is a feeling that we might have employees on payroll who are not genuine hence this process will aid in weeding out the ghost workers,” said Ager.
This is not the first time the county is conducting a workers headcount. Previous administrations did the same to try rid off ghost employees and to control the high wage bill.
“This is one of the validation processes we are undertaking to corroborate and show that the headcount done previously was valid”, he added.
