Bungoma Losing Agriculture’s 6 Million Shillings to Ghosts

By Virginia Mwangi

Bungoma County has again called for the media’s attention, this time not because of the wheelbarrows, following a revelation that the Agriculture docket alone loses at the very least 6 million shillings every financial year to ghost workers.

12 ghost workers, as has been revealed, have been receiving varying amounts of what is probably supposed to be salary and allowances. Some of the workers are past retirement age while some are supposedly about to retire according to the audit report.

In the presence of the task force’s chairman, Barasa Nyukuri and Agriculture County Executive Commissioner (CEC), Bungoma’s Deputy Governor Charles Ngome, on Monday, announced the findings at Mabanga Farmers Training Centre in the county.

The task force report recommended that the workers be promoted to improve their morale and encouraged that the youth be given opportunities to boost vibrancy in the county.

“We will find out how the ghost workers got onto the payroll and those responsible will be punished,” DP Ngome said adding they would implement the report’s recommendations.

CEC Nyukuri added that the task force would grill persons listed as ghost workers to establish who had employed them.

This obviously arouses concern on how much the ghost workers are earning in other counties, if in one docket alone in one county 6 million shillings is being lost, then it is worrying the number of loopholes that are crippling the Country’s economy.