More than three months have passed since City Hall launched a Sh11 million biometric registration of staff aimed at weeding out imposters and ghost workers at the county government.
The registration was launched by Governor Mike Sonko on May 22 this year and was to end on June 22.
But the county government has been tight-lipped on what came out of the much-touted project.
City Hall Devolution Executive Larry Wambua said that the exercise is still going on but was, however, non-committal on its progress.
“The report is not out as we are still going on with the registration process,” said Mr Wambua Monday.
Nonetheless, according to an official at the county privy to the progress of the registration exercise, the report is out but is yet to be made public as its content is “too dicey”.
In light of this, according to the official, the county government is yet to make a decision on whether to release the report as its implementation is sure to shake political associations with a particular community set to be “seriously” affected if its recommendations are effected to the letter.
“The report is damning as it has revealed that a particular community has almost 70 percent of employees at the county with a good number of them past 55 years of age, some are even over 70 but are still on the county’s payroll,” said the official who sought anonymity.
The registration exercise was to help Mr Sonko’s administration rein in ghost workers following rising concerns over the number of imposters operating as bona fide county workers capturing the bio-data of all the 12,489 employees.
The project was awarded to Starlite Company whose management promised that it would run from May 22 to June 15, adding that the verification SMS code would be announced to the public once the registration was complete.
“The system works in such a way that once registered, each worker will be issued with a unique identification number. If a member of the public sends a message and finds that the said person is an imposter, he will be given an option of contacting the police,” said Mr Patrick Kariuki, the firm’s systems operator.
The governor, during the launch, said that the new system was to see the county staff issued with biometric cards containing their details and a unique number as well as name tags that will be mandatory for all county and sub-county staff to wear.
He explained that the new employee numbers that will be generated by the system will enable residents to verify whether a person claiming to be an officer or worker at the county is a bona fide employee by sending their unique identifier number to an SMS code to be announced to the public.
“All county staff will have to go through the system. This will enable the public to query whether the said staff are bona fide employees of the county or not. We have been losing millions to these ghost workers that have somehow managed to infiltrate all government sectors,” said Mr Sonko at the time.
City Hall is currently spending Sh1.1 billion every month in staff salaries, having the third highest workforce after the national government and the police service.
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