Hundreds of Nyamira County employees’ fate is unknown after the deputy governor (DG) Amos Nyaribo raised concern over what he termed as irregular employment effected by a senior county officials.
In a confidential letter seen by our reporter Monday dated 1st March and signed by the DG Nyaribo, he asked the Department of Public Service Management (PSM) to suspend the said employees from work and County payroll until investigations into how and who employed them is concluded.
“While investigations are going on, H.E Governor and I have decided to put a stop into this and hereby direct that , all those who were deployed and reported to work between January, 2018 to date be suspended and stop reporting to work until investigations are complete and those involved are made to account. This includes those already in the payroll whose salaries will be stopped immediately," Said the DG.
Nyaribo noted in the letter that the ‘illegal’ employment took place between January 2018 and January 2019.He said the move was aimed at sabotaging the devolved unit’s development agenda and operations by raising wage bill.
“This is a mystery and sabotage of government development agenda and operations, since the employment was not budgeted for or requisitioned by any department and has since affected the County’s wage bill against the provision stipulated in the public finance management (PFM) act 2012," added Nyaribo.
The employment has been conducted secretly and letters back dated to 2016. The tax payer has been on the receiving end. The said employees have been receiving their salaries from 2016 despite reporting to work in 2018.
The rot in County has seen residents and tax payers lose millions of shillings to employees who the County government does not need; according to auditor general’s reports.
The County Secretary (CS) Eric Onchana and director of Human resource are at the centre of this controversy and are accused of conducting the illegal employments behind the backs of Governor John Obiero and his Deputy.
The list of the illegal employees is said to be kept and maintained by the County’s Director of Human resource with protection from the County Secretary.
In April 2018, Nyaribo sacked the county secretary for related issues while the Governor was on treatment at a US hospital. This brought a bad blood between the Governor’s loyalists and those of DG and the relationships got worse when the embattled Onchana was reinstated by Nyagarama immediately he returned from the four-month medical leave, a move that didn’t go well with DG Nyaribo.
The rift between the two was even wider.
Truce has since been reached as the two in January this year were said to have devolved the famous ‘handshake’ and pledged to work hand in hand.
The cadres most affected in the scandal are enforcement and support staff.
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