Most county staff ‘are not qualified’

The majority of Mombasa county government workers comprises primary school dropouts, an audit survey shows.

According to the report released by Ernst &Young on Wednesday, 1,136 out of 2,551 who turned up for the vetting last year were Standard Eight dropouts.

Only 178 workers were graduates and 34 had postgraduate education. Some 998 had completed Form Four studies.

The survey showed that 199 did not indicate their education level and six did not have any formal education. The firm also noted that most employees may be unqualified for the positions they hold.

“Most of the employees with primary and secondary school education are employed in the environment, engineering, inspectorate and social service and housing departments,” said Mr Laban Gathungu, a partner at the firm told a forum that was also attended by deputy Governor Hazel Katana.

Muslim for Human Rights (Muhuri) in collaboration with the county government had contracted the firm to audit the county employees to weed out ghost workers, those on the payroll despite having reached retirement age, the dead and unqualified.

Mr Gathungu noted that most employees vetted could not indicate how they got the jobs — they did not present certified employment letters.

“Only one employee presented an original copy of the employment letter as 416 presented certified copies of the same. About 2,053 had uncertified copies of employment letters whereas some did not even have them.”

The audit partner said that 577 workers vetted could not name their supervisors or gave only one name.

He further added that they noted discrepancies in the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) PIN certificates and national identifications of most of the employees.

 Ms Katana, while receiving the report from Muhuri chairman Khelef Khalifa, noted that the county was in the process of addressing some of the inconsistencies in the preliminary report.

“Some employees have been sacked and we are processing retirement packages for others,” said Ms Katana.