The National Treasury will disburse salaries and pensions to civil servants and former state officials, respectively, through an integrated payments system, starting this month.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi said the move is aimed at curbing the scourge of ghost workers.
The system, dubbed the Integrated Personnel Payroll Database (IPPD), launched in 1998 by the government, will now also include pensioners.
“Starting this month-end, we’ll be paying every government official using the system. Even pensioners will receive their settlements via the same system so that we clean up any duplicates, ghost workers, and erroneous payments,” Treasury Mbadi told the joint parliamentary committees on Energy and the Privatisation on Monday.
In January 2025, the annual 2024 Public Service Commission (PSC)report said the civil service had over 17,000 ghost workers benefitting from taxpayers’ money.
This is a drop from the previous year’s report that revealed close to 20,000 ghost workers on the government payroll, signifying an intentionally bloated public service.
In the annual report covering the 2022/2023 financial year, PSC established that there were 19,467 additional employees in different government agencies and departments against the approved staffing levels.
According to the report, at the time, State House and the New Kenya Cooperative Creameries Limited had an excess of over 100 workers each, with 15 other organisations listed as having more than 50 percent of their recommended staff establishment.
The PSC revelation confirms reports by the Controller of Budget, Margaret Nyakang'o, on a mismatch in the country's expenditure, where 70 percent of budgetary allocations to both national and county governments is spent on recurrent expenditure, paying salaries, with a meagre 30 percent or less spent on development.
About 15 organisations had excess staff, with the commission listing five that had over 50 percent additional staff over and above their recommended staffing level.
The Kenya Medical Supplies Authority had 115 percent staff over and above the recommended numbers, the National Water Harvesting and Storage Authority at 72 percent, the State Department for Devolution at 61 percent, the State Department for Higher Education and Research at 69 percent, and the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services at 59 percent.
