By The Weekly Vision Investigations Desk
The Nairobi City County Government, under Governor Johnson Sakaja, is facing a fresh storm after Auditor General Nancy Gathungu unveiled damning details of irregular staff recruitment and payroll manipulation in the 2023/2024 financial year.
At the centre of the scandal is the controversial hiring of 3,834 new employees. According to the Auditor General, the entire process lacked transparency, no advertisements were placed, no employment plan was prepared, and no interview records or score sheets exist. This has made it impossible to establish how the individuals were identified, whether the vacancies existed, or if the appointments were legally sanctioned.
Shockingly, the county introduced positions that do not appear in the approved staff establishment, including Chief Executive Officers for City County Referral Hospitals. The minimum qualifications for some of these roles were also unclear, raising fears of politically-motivated placements.
The report further reveals that 13 staff members who had been dismissed were irregularly paid salaries backdated up to two years. The county failed to explain the justification or the total amounts involved. In addition, officials ignored a clear provision in the Public Service Human Resource Policy requiring termination of salary payments within ten days of dismissal or desertion of duty.
Equally troubling are irregular alterations in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD). Investigators found that:
- Some officers’ basic salaries were changed multiple times within a single year.
- Over 3,200 officers changed job groups more than once, with 24 of them shifting positions three times.
- Payroll numbers were linked to multiple National ID numbers and Tax PINs.
- Nearly 200 officers had their birth dates altered repeatedly.
Such discrepancies, according to experts, are a hallmark of systemic payroll fraud. Perhaps the most glaring anomaly lies in the appointment of individuals without the requisite academic or professional qualifications.
For example:
- A Director of Infrastructure and Information Security was appointed despite lacking a master’s degree or advanced leadership training.
- An Assistant Director of ICT Infrastructure had never served the mandatory three years in the lower grade.
- A Senior ICT Officer was elevated from the position of a security warden.
- A Deputy Director of Cultural Development was promoted just months after his last appointment, bypassing experience requirements.
These revelations cast serious doubt on the integrity of Nairobi County’s human resource practices. Critics argue that the pattern of irregular hiring, salary manipulation, and questionable promotions points to entrenched patronage networks.
Governor Sakaja, who has often styled himself as a reformist leader, now faces growing pressure to explain how such glaring irregularities occurred under his watch. As the Auditor General’s findings circulate, the questions persist: Was this incompetence, systemic fraud, or deliberate favouritism?
For Nairobi residents, already grappling with service delivery challenges, the scandal underscores a deeper concern: whether the county payroll is serving the public interest or lining the pockets of the well-connected.
