About a quarter of workers in 26 counties could be non-existent, special audits on payrolls have revealed, raising concerns of possible fraud that may have cost taxpayers billions of shillings.
This follows the inability of public auditors to trace 25.3 percent of workers sampled to verify their existence, despite several attempts to reach the 596 employees who were paid Sh978 million over just three years.
In separate audits of counties’ payroll management, Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu sampled 2,354 workers from payrolls and asked county governments to present them for physical verification. Of these, 596 did not turn up.
The failure by more than a quarter of the sampled employees to physically present themselves left auditors unable to verify whether they were genuine staff or ghost workers, sounding the alarm that Sh978 million paid to them as salaries over three years to June 2024 could have been lost.
An extrapolation of the data based on the counties’ overall wage bill shows they could have paid as much as Sh33.5 billion to non-existent staff in the 2024/25 fiscal year alone, if the audit findings cut across their total workforce.
The Controller of Budget (CoB) reported that in the year ending June 2025, the 26 counties spent Sh132.2 billion on salaries.
Questioning the authenticity of county payrolls, the Auditor-General revealed that Machakos County had the highest number of suspected ghost workers, with more than half of employees summoned by auditors failing to appear.
“The Special Audit requested 44 employees from the County Executive to present themselves for physical verification. However, 23 employees did not avail themselves for the exercise, despite multiple attempts to reach out to them,” Ms Gathungu said of the Machakos County audit.
“During the period under review, the 23 employees collectively received a gross salary amounting to Sh75,765,585. These employees may not exist, presenting the risk of irregular or fraudulent payments.”
Machakos, however, is just one of several counties facing the problem of suspected ghost workers, where employees appear on payrolls and draw salaries but do not report to work.
The special audits revealed that in 10 of the 26 counties with suspected ghost workers, between 28 percent and 52 percent of employees sampled for verification failed to turn up.
In Mandera and Kajiado counties, for instance, more than 49 percent of employees sampled from payrolls to verify their authenticity were no-shows.
Auditors sampled 189 workers in the Kajiado County Executive, out of whom 94 did not turn up. The employees who failed to appear pocketed Sh82.7 million in salaries over the three-year period, the public auditor said.
In Mandera County, 49 out of the 99 workers sampled for verification also failed to appear, raising concerns over the prudence of Sh112 million paid to them in salaries over three years.
The Auditor-General made the requests to verify the authenticity of staff on county payrolls between December 2024 and February last year.
She said that 30.3 percent of sampled workers in Nairobi County could not be traced, as was the case for 33.7 percent in Samburu County, 38.2 percent in Nandi County, and 28 percent each in Mombasa and Kakamega counties.
“The letter requested 89 employees to present themselves for physical verification. However, 27 employees did not present themselves, despite multiple attempts to reach out to them. During the period under review, the 27 officers collectively received a gross salary amounting to Sh47,552,597,” she said of the Nairobi County audit.
In Kiambu County, the public auditor was unable to trace 21 out of a sample of 106 staff for verification of their existence, although the 21 pocketed Sh67.8 million in salaries over three years.
A total of 596 employees who failed to prove their existence pocketed Sh978 million in salaries between July 2021 and June 2024, representing an average monthly salary of Sh45,582 per worker over the three years.
Higher salaries
Among the unverified workers, those in Baringo County pocketed the highest monthly salaries, averaging Sh130,143 each and totalling Sh23.4 million for the five employees involved.
The 34 workers in Nandi County were also paid an average of Sh109,515 monthly over the three years, while the three untraced workers in Isiolo County pocketed an average of Sh102,303 per month.
The public auditor said the failure by employees to appear for physical verification casts doubt on the authenticity of payroll records, raising the risk of irregular or fraudulent payments, “including paying salaries to staff who do not offer services to the County Executive.”
The findings come amid further revelations that 41 counties hired 27,284 workers over the three years, with auditors raising alarm over the lack of recruitment plans and budgets during the hiring spree, exposing counties to the risk of overstaffing.
County governments had a combined workforce of 226,500 employees by 2024, according to the latest Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) data.
The SRC reported that counties’ wage bill hit Sh215.08 billion in the year ending June 2024, after growing by Sh12.88 billion from the previous year.
The public auditor also revealed several instances where employee records held by Chief Officers differed from those in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database (IPPD), exposing possible cases of ghost workers.
“Comparison of the staff lists countersigned by various Chief Officers with staff registers from the IPPD system established that there were 177 employees who appeared in the Chief Officers’ lists but not in the IPPD. Further, 460 employees were in IPPD but not in the lists provided by Chief Officers, and collectively received Sh205,106,394.80 in earnings in 2023/24,” Ms Gathungu said.
The Auditor-General also faulted the use of manual payrolls across several counties to process salaries, noting that the system is vulnerable to manipulation and fraud, “potentially resulting in unauthorised payments and disbursements to unverified personnel.”
Several counties processed salaries worth hundreds of millions of shillings using manual payrolls during the three years under review, the special audit established.
