Instead, David Kinuthia is hoping against hope that he will not be jailed for receiving a monthly pay for 360 months without doing any work for the defunct City Council of Nairobi (NCC) for a single day.
In the days of NCC, Kinuthia was employed as a shopkeeper by one of the council’s senior officers.
However, instead of being paid by his boss from the shop’s coffers, his name was sneaked into the council’s payroll, where he drew a salary every month.
Kinuthia, who confessed that he had been getting a salary of Sh11,300 per month over the years, was a ghost supervisor in the Housing and Social Services Department.
However Kinuthia started feeling the heat after The Counties unearthed a scam where one employee was getting 45 salaries and over 4,000 workers drawing more than one salary.
Fearing that he might spend his sunset days behind bars after the exposure, Kinuthia stealthily strolled to City Hall and confessed his sins to governor Evans Kidero.
“I am an old man who had one year left ‘to retire’ and I do not want to rot in jail. I have been drawing a salary of Sh11,300 per month for three decades,” said the long serving ghost worker.
Well crafted
He added: “A senior officer employed me as a shopkeeper in one of his shops along River Road. I have never worked for the council.”
Going by his current salary, this means that for 30 years, the old man has pocketed about Sh4,068,000 from the council instead of being paid by his employer.
After The Counties’ expose, Kidero said he ordered an internal audit that revealed there are many ghost workers still on the county government’s payroll.
“I forgave the man who came and reported to me that he was being paid for work not done. But I will press charges against the managers and the employees who knowingly drew more than one salary,” the governor says.
He also reveals that two chief managers, a director and his deputy at the Finance and Housing and Social Services departments have been interdicted and will be arraigned in court soon.
“Since I came here, I have detected 500 ghost workers. But after the fresh scandal, I have struck 221 off the payroll, saving us Sh10 million per month,” Kidero says.
In a well-crafted scam, the employees had managed to have their names appear more than once in the county government’s payroll.
The crafty employees with the assistance of directors, payroll managers and Nairobi City Council Co-operative Union (Nacico) personnel had been varying their identity card and payroll numbers and interchanging their names to withdraw the money.
Most of the payments were done through Nacico, situated at Nacico Plaza, which is self owned by the co-operative union.
Some of the workers had been drawing more than 45 salaries from the same employer for doing the same kind of work per month.
Majority of those who operated multiple account numbers to defraud the county government included employees from the Planning, Environment, Education, Health and Inspectorate departments.
Documents in our possession show that there are duplicate file names of workers who are paid money through dubious account numbers.
Payroll number 19790002578 was used 45 times by the same person to draw money monthly by using different identity card and account numbers.
Other payroll numbers that got more than one salary are 19890002838, 19870003857, 19790007126, 19870011582 and 19810001873.
The governor says he has found out that salaries are paid to people who are either dead or live abroad.
Blame game
“We have unearthed information that our money is paid to relatives of some of our senior employees who are not employed here and some of them live abroad,” the governor says.
Patroba Okello, Nacico’s Chief Executive Officer said he is not aware of the fraud but threw the blame back to City Hall.
“I only pay after getting the names from City Hall. If something is wrong, the blame is not mine,” Okello says.
Pressed further on why he pays without verification, he became agitated and said he cannot divulge any information before disconnecting the phone.
- The Standard
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