By The Weekly Vision Analysis
Kenya’s county governments are grappling with a persistent drain on public resources caused by “ghost workers”, non-existent or unverifiable employees who continue to draw salaries, allowances and benefits from county payrolls. Recent disclosures by Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu show systemic weaknesses that allow billions of Kenyan shillings to vanish annually, prompting the National Treasury to intervene directly in how counties process wages.
A special payroll audit carried out between December 2024 and February 2025 sampled 2,354 employees across 26 counties. Auditors were unable to physically verify 596 of them, 25.3% of the sample, despite repeated attempts to reach them. These untraceable workers had collectively drawn approximately KSh 978 million in salaries between July 2021 and June 2024.
Extrapolated across the full county workforce, the potential loss could exceed KSh 33.5 billion in a single financial year, set against total county salary spending of KSh 132.2 billion by June 2025, according to the Controller of Budget. Separate reviews found that 22 of Kenya’s 47 counties spent KSh 6.5 billion in just the first nine months of the 2024/25 financial year paying staff who exist only on paper, a crisis Treasury officials have reportedly described as a “pandemic” affecting most devolved units.
By 2024, county governments carried a combined workforce of around 226,500 employees, with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission recording an overall wage bill of KSh 215.08 billion for the year ending June 2024, up KSh 12.88 billion on the previous year. Separately, auditors found that 41 counties had hired 27,284 new workers over three years, often without approved recruitment plans or budgets, heightening the risk of overstaffing and further payroll abuse.
Different audit exercises have flagged different counties as the worst offenders, depending on the sample and period examined:
- Kajiado County emerged as the most affected in the December 2024–February 2025 special audit: of 189 employees called for physical verification, 94 failed to appear.
- Machakos County recorded the highest proportion of no-shows in an earlier sampling round, with 23 of 44 summoned employees, more than half, failing to appear. They had been paid KSh 75.8 million over the review period.
- Nairobi City County could not trace 30.3% of its sampled staff. In one instance, 27 of 89 employees who were requested to avail themselves for verification failed to turn up, having collectively drawn a gross salary of KSh 47.6 million. Separately, Nairobi was found to have channelled KSh 629.63 million through manual payrolls outside the electronic system, equivalent to 4.9% of its total wage bill.
- Kiambu County could not account for 21 of a 106-strong sample, who had nonetheless pocketed KSh 67.8 million in salaries over three years.
- Garissa County was separately reported to have carried 321 suspected ghost workers who survived a payroll purge, having pocketed roughly KSh 731 million.
Rift Valley counties collectively lost at least KSh 1 billion to ghost workers between the 2022/23 and 2024/25 financial years. Affected areas include Kajiado, Nandi (38.2% of sampled staff unverified), Samburu (33.7%), Baringo, Nakuru, Bomet, Uasin Gishu and Elgeyo Marakwet. In some cases, average monthly salaries paid to unverified staff exceeded KSh 100,000; unverified employees in Nandi, for example, earned an average of KSh 109,515 a month, while verified Baringo staff received the highest average monthly pay in the region, at KSh 130,143.
Much of the Rift Valley loss was channelled through manual payrolls rather than the government’s Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD), a system the Auditor-General has repeatedly warned is prone to abuse. By 2024/25, Rift Valley counties had processed at least KSh 500 million manually, including KSh 92.75 million in Nakuru and KSh 97.63 million in Elgeyo Marakwet. In Nandi, a further KSh 15.7 million was irregularly paid to casual workers with no documented work sites or attendance records, while eleven officers received double allowances totalling KSh 36.5 million across both IPPD and manual payrolls, and 27 retirees were kept on the books at a cost of KSh 11.1 million.
Bomet County alone may have lost around KSh 48 million in illegal salaries and allowances to retirees; in one case, 12 officers were found sharing bank accounts to receive salaries totalling KSh 8.64 million. Across Narok, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu and Bomet, more than KSh 100 million was paid over two financial years to employees who had already reached the statutory retirement age of 60.
Nyamira County has faced sustained scrutiny, with earlier audits flagging up to 736 ghost workers and losses approaching KSh 2.8 billion in a single financial year (2018/19). Payroll staff were suspended in past probes, yet questions persist.
Lamu County saw at least 112 ghost workers identified in a 2022 human resources audit covering more than 100 workstations and 1,693 personnel; payments to these unaccounted-for names continued for years.
Kericho County had 1,955 employees without personal identification numbers, paid outside the IPPD system; a gap the Auditor-General warned heightens the risk of fraud.
Vihiga County was found to be paying out roughly KSh 32 million a month to workers who could not be traced at their duty stations, with around 426 employees unaccounted for according to the County Public Service Board.
Other counties, including Mombasa and Kakamega (28% unverified each), Mandera, Homa Bay, Laikipia and Siaya, have reported similar patterns, including multiple employees sharing single bank accounts; in one extreme case, 52 salaries were traced to a single account.
The ghost worker problem extends beyond county staff rolls. A special audit covering the 2020/21 to 2023/24 period found that more than KSh 20 million had been disbursed to 14 non-existent schools that existed only on paper yet held functional bank accounts and continued to receive capitation funding. Separately, the healthcare sector has seen the boldest fraud attempts: over 1,000 hospitals were sanctioned for attempting to claim KSh 10.6 billion from the Social Health Authority (SHA) in respect of services never rendered.
A joint interim review of the national HRIS-Kenya payroll system by the Auditor-General and the State Department for Public Service also found that 5,778 employees were recorded as having been “posted” to duty stations before they were even hired, alongside missing surnames, invalid KRA PINs, multiple identity numbers linked to a single person, and continued reliance on shared bank accounts. More than 300 state corporations have yet to migrate onto the platform.
Recurring warning signs identified across the audits include:
- Staff who repeatedly fail to appear for verification exercises
- Continued payments to retirees still listed as active employees
- Missing or incomplete employment documentation
- Mass recruitment drives without approved budgets or workforce plans
- Multiple employees linked to a single bank account.
- Reliance on manual or Excel-based payrolls outside the IPPD or HRIS-Kenya systems
Experts point to collusion between human resources and finance officers, ageing payroll infrastructure, and weak internal controls as the main enabling factors. Devolution, while empowering counties, has decentralised these vulnerabilities without a matching strengthening of oversight capacity.
The diversion of funds undermines service delivery in health, infrastructure and education, sectors already under severe budget strain. Taxpayers bear the burden while genuine public servants face delayed or shrinking pay. Compounding the problem, counties were separately reported to be holding more than KSh 44 billion in unpaid workers’ dues for over three years, exposing them to litigation, penalties and mounting interest charges even as ghost workers continue to be paid without interruption.
The Public Service Commission and the Auditor-General have repeatedly called for biometric verification, full digitisation of payrolls, and stricter adherence to the IPPD. In April 2026, National Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo directed all County Executive Committee Members for Finance and County Assembly Clerks to process salaries exclusively through the newly integrated HRIS-Kenya Payroll System and IFMIS platform from that month onward. The integration is designed to automatically process and remit statutory deductions, including PAYE, SHA and NSSF contributions, directly to the relevant government entities, closing off one of the main loopholes exploited through manual payroll processing.
Some counties have responded with suspensions and internal audits, including the dismissal of 176 workers in Laikipia as part of a cost-cutting drive, but meaningful prosecutions remain limited. Nationally, irregularities identified in just 12 state departments recently totalled KSh 6.2 billion, prompting the Cabinet to direct the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to probe and prosecute those responsible.
As Kenya grapples with economic pressure and growing public demand for accountability, tackling ghost workers is not merely a technical exercise; it is a test of governance itself. Without decisive action, these spectral employees will continue to haunt county coffers, eroding public trust in devolution and diverting resources away from the citizens it was designed to serve.
