Wajir County governor Ahmed Abdullahi has announced that his government has halted the recruitment of new county staff until an ongoing human resource audit on the staff of the county is concluded.

Speaking on Wednesday, while launching a consignment of medical supplies worth Sh69 million, governor Abdullahi regretted that the county had been turned into a recruitment hub, underscoring that a significant number of people were drawing salaries without working.

The governor said that his administration has procured a team of technical experts to aid the directorate of personnel management and the county public service board to execute the audit exercise.

The county boss further outlined that audit will be carried out in all the departments in the county including and not limited to Directors, Deputies and other top echelons of the various departments.

Governor Abdullahi clarified that the ongoing audit exercise is not meant to victimise or target any individual rebuking claims from a section of members of the public that the exercise was a decoy of witchunt to a section of the county staffers.

The county boss also issued an admonition to roque and ghost county staff and those with fake and fabricated document that they will be dealt with accordingly.

“Until the ongoing staff audit is over, to help us bring a solution to the current bloated workforce, our County shall not undertake recruitment of new employees.”
said the governor.

“The county has 6,000 county staff and 1,500 of them have been found to be ghost workers drawing salary from the county coffers.” We are not going to employ anyone and the county public service board has frozen recruitment of new personnel.” said Abdullahi.

Governor Abdullahi has in September this year revealed that the county’s wage bill had surpassed the required 35 percent as per the law.

“We cannot continue entertaining ghost workers who are drawing salaries amounting to millions that could be used for development.” he said.