The Siaya County Government has discovered a massive employment scam with more than 380 ghost workers in the health department.
Wilfred Ouma Nyagudi, Chief Executive Officer of the Siaya County Public Service Board, announced that the staff had been hired with falsified documents at the beginning of this year.
He said the board carried out a verification exercise of over 500 supposed employees following the rising complaints about unpaid salaries for nearly eight months. “From the verification, we found out that only 120 workers had been employed through a formal interview process and all the rest had manipulated the payroll through forgery of appointment letters,” Nyagudi stated.
He further stated that the Criminal Investigations Directorate (DCI) was engaged in document verification, and the results confirm that the appointment letters were fakes.
The fraud has led to suspicions about the honesty of recruitment procedures in county governments and the danger that public money could be diverted to fraudulent schemes.
The police are interrogating those responsible for the falsifications and those who helped the ghost workers to be entered into the payroll system.
