No room for ghost workers as Sonko’s administration unveils City Hall biometric report

NAIROBI, November 27, 2019, GPS

The much awaited report of the Nairobi City County biometric exercise that kicked off in May 2019 is finally out.

The report indicates that City Hall has 11,603 employees officially registered in the new system.

Before the exercise, the county had 11,988 employees as per the April, 2019 payroll.

Some 385 employees were not registered.

This is because 200 of them have retired, 58 are out due to disciplinary cases, 11 resigned and 23 died within the same period.

Another 85 are outside the country for training.

County Secretary Leboo Morintant, while officially receiving the results, said this will help eradicate ghost workers and imposters.

“The public can verify our genuine staff via a simple SMS to a code that we will share with them and this will take away the issue of fraudsters and imposters,” Leboo said.

The public will be able to identify genuine staff by sending the personal number to a short code number 40471 that will relay results verifying whether the person is genuine staff.

In the event the person is not a county employee, the public will report such a case through the telephone number 0725624489 and/or contact the nearest county enforcement officer or police.

Leboo said the results will help the county reduce its wage bill from 59 per cent of its total recurrent budget to at least 50 per cent within the next two years.

The move, which seeks to avail more funds for development programs, has been discussed and adopted by the county executive members.

While referring to the 2018/19 Controller of Budget report, Leboo said the County must find a proper and sustainable balance between development budget and funds available for recurrent expenditure.

“The wage bill is slowly declining but we are not yet at the required level if we have to avail more funds for development,” Leboo said.

The county’s wage bill reduced by 7.4 per cent from Sh14.84 billion in FY 2017/18 to Sh13.74 billion in FY 2018/19 and it is targeting a further decline of 9 per cent within the next two years.

From the total budget passed for the county, over 70 per cent goes to salaries (59 per cent), while operations and maintenance consume 41 per cent.

This is as per the COB report for the 2018/19 year.

The county spends close to Sh1.2 billion monthly on salaries and allowances.

Some of the measures being proposed by the county include increasing own source revenue which currently stands at Sh10.25 billion to at least Sh15 billion, reviewing employees’ productivity levels viz-a-viz their terms of employment and setting new regulations on employment for the county going forward.

According to Leboo, all this has adequately been covered by the Biometric Report recommendations

Employees who retired recently and those recommended for retirement upon acceptance shall be issued with certificates in a special event that will see some promoted.

The event is scheduled to take place in December before the Christmas break.

Among those expected to attend the function include ICT CS Joe Mucheru, Tourism CS Najib Balala and Professor Margaret Kobia of the Public Service, Youth and Gender.

Previous reports from the CoB indicate that high wage bills make it difficult for counties to finance development projects.

Governor Mike Sonko will be joining President Uhuru Kenyatta in an event that will allow participants delve into the wage bill issue at KICC.

The governor has welcomed the new measures geared towards reducing the wage bill.

“We have been battling the ballooning wage bill and ghost workers.

“Once we reduce the wage bill, we free up funds for development,” said Sonko.

He said that his aim is seeing quick transformation where no one will be living in squalor.

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