Kenya registers civil servants to target ‘ghost workers’

Kenya has started biometrically registering all civil servants in an attempt to remove “ghost workers” from the government’s payroll.

Employees who failed to register over the next two weeks would no longer be paid, a government statement said.

The government suspects that thousands of people continue to receive salaries after leaving the civil service.

President Uhuru Kenyatta was the first person to register – he has pledged to curb corruption.

“It is in your best interest that you get registered lest you are counted as a ghost worker,” he told civil servants in the coastal city of Mombasa.

An audit earlier this year found that at least $1m (£700,000) a month was lost in payments to “ghost workers” and other financial malpractice.

The government suspects that salaries continue to be deposited into bank accounts, even after a person dies or leaves the public service, reports the BBC’s Wanyama Chebusiri from the capital, Nairobi.

All public servants are required to present themselves over the next two weeks at identification centres to ensure their data is captured through the biometric registration exercise, a government statement said.

Anyone who failed to do so without a valid excuse would be eliminated from the payroll, it said.

BBC News 

UM– USEKE.RW