Why government struggles to get good workers and dump bad ones

What you need to know:

  • There is a worrying pattern of people with fake academic certificates and people who left other government institutions amid financial mismanagement scandals bouncing back into even higher positions.
  • The situational is further complicated by how difficult it is to remove someone from government once they are found to be corrupt, or unsuitable for a job, or once their term ends.

Every day, national and county governments, parastatals and constitutional bodies employ people to work in different parts of government. You find their advertisements in the back of every newspaper.

Given the high rate of unemployment in Kenya, these are probably the most thumbed-through sections of the paper, after the sports and betting pages.

Virtually all advertisements list the qualifications required for each job in terms of experience as well as professional and academic qualifications.

They also list certain documents that each applicant should produce should they be short-listed for interviews. These include clearance by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, presumably to show they have no corruption cases pending, the Higher Education Loans Board, the Kenya Revenue Authority to show that they have paid their taxes, and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

In addition, people who aspire to manage public institutions also are also vetted by parliamentary or ad hoc bodies, where they answer questions about their background and where members of the public can contribute support or present allegations as to the suitability of the applicants.

Despite all these checks, there is a worrying pattern of people with fake academic certificates and people who left other government institutions amid financial mismanagement scandals bouncing back into even higher positions.

People who may not even be citizens or who may not have the capacity to do the job that they applied for actually get it. Sometimes people get jobs they did not even apply for.

There are people who start to run down institutions as soon as they join them, or who approve suspicious financial deals as soon as they enter office.

Clearly these people with shady backgrounds are brought into government because they know how to siphon the system, deliver for their masters, and cover their tracks.

The situation is further complicated by how difficult it is to remove someone from government once they are found to be corrupt, or unsuitable for a job, or once their term ends.

The same people sue to stay on the job and you see in the newspapers that Supreme Court judges, suspended policemen, police bosses, people accused of corruption, sports officials, people with pending criminal cases are spending as much time in court as they are in the office, all trying to hang on to their jobs.

Sometimes, to get rid of someone in government, you have to dissolve his or her office.

The solution is to have more "good" people apply for jobs, but few have the tolerance to go through the vetting process.

No one is a saint, but then they don’t want to put up with having a single mistake they made 10 years ago being shown on the news or on Bullseye, as they stammer their way through an answer.

Twitter: @bankelele