376 out of 6, 321 Machakos County Government employees didn’t have academic certificates as of November 2022.
This is according to a report presented to Governor Wavinya Ndeti by her administration’s task force on Human Resources Audit on Thursday.
The taskforce was among those commissioned by the governor in November 2022.
The other taskforces that handed over their reports to the county CEO included; Pending Bills, Motor vehicles and ICT Infrastructure.
Gregory Somba who presented the report to the governor on behalf of the 13-member team said they established that 2,889 other employees didn’t have academic transcripts, while 1,378 lacked job confirmation letters.
“We established that the county government as of November 2022 had a total of 6, 321 staff imposts spread across the departments who were not optimally placed. That was a key finding,” Somba said.
Somba said a biometric headcount conducted by the taskforce on the workers verified 6,150 employees while 186 employees weren’t verified since they didn’t turn up for the exercise.
He said they also established irregular employment and promotions of staff against the principles of Articles 10 and 232 of the Constitution and the County Government Act 2012 sections 65, 66, 67 to 74 were done in the county during the period.
“There were 116 cases of irregular appointments, 197 cases of promotions without due process, 60 cases of employees serving in positions not recognized in county government structures,” Somba said.
The task force revealed that there was a lack of Machakos County HR Policy Manual and non-compliance with career regulations, guidelines, schemes of service, collective bargaining agreement, established county job groups and grading structures as per the Salaries and Remuneration Commission.
Somba said employment laws and policies were lacking and there were delayed confirmations of staff in appointments after the completion of the probation period against the County Government Amendment Act 2020.
He said they found out that there were 49 employees who had completed their probation period but hadn’t been confirmed in appointments.
“Accrued leave days without accountability was the order of the day that contributed to leakage of finances,” Somba said.
“We established that there were the unapproved conversion of terms and conditions of service from contractual to permanent terms without due process,” Somba said.
Somba said there were 146 cases of employees who didn’t have the minimum academic qualifications to hold positions of ward and village administrators as per the IPPD.
He said there was non-disclosure of disciplinary and non-procedural termination of disciplinary cases.
“There were 15 delayed disciplinary cases. This led to the loss of county funds through compensation and remunerations. Human resource management malpractices were also established; transfers without job descriptions, management of staff on study leave and unprocedural termination of disciplinary cases, resignation and designation of officers and those serving beyond mandatory retirement age,” Somba said.
Somba said there were 79 cases of staff serving beyond the mandatory retirement age of 60 years and 207 cases of staff whose contractual terms had expired.
“We found out that Machakos County workforce is ageing with 778 employees between the ages of 50 and 54 years. 571 employees are between the ages of 55 and 59,” he said.
He said there were 2,227 staff serving on a permanent and pensionable basis translating to 35 percent of the county government’s workforce and should be accounted for across the departments.
“The ratio here should be supporting staff 30 percent, while technical 70 percent,” Somba said.
Somba said they established that there was no viable training for inspectorate officers.