By Geraldine Mutua
About 20,000 ghost workers exist in the government payroll; the Public Service Commission (PSC) has revealed.
The commission in its 2022/2023 financial year report established that above the legally accepted number of public servants, there existed an extra 19,467 employees in different government agencies and departments.
The report that tracks the performance of the public sector showed that ministries and state departments had a total of 12,535 unauthorized staff making it the highest while the state corporations and public universities followed with 4558 and 2287 respectively.
Other government entities with extra unauthorized employees were the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority, National Water Harvesting and Storage Authority, State Department for Higher Education and Research, State Department for Immigration and State Department for Devolution.
The report confirmed a recent revelation by the Controller of Budget of a mismatch between the recurrent and development expenditure allocation to both the national and county governments.
Ms Nyakang’o noted that 70 percent of budgetary allocations in both levels of the government had been channeled to paying salaries while a paltry 30 percent supported development projects.
The commission recommended that all the public organizations establish a human resource development and management plan by June this year.
