Nairobi News

Hustle

Biometric report reveals Sonko’s aging workforce at City Hall

By Collins Omulo November 29th, 2019 2 min read

About a half of Nairobi County government employees are over 50 years old, with most set to retire soon, a report has shown.

The biometric report released by the county on Thursday gave the county government a clean bill of health in terms of ghost workers.

BIOMETRIC REPORT

The report, which has been delayed for more than four months, showed that out of the 11,603 City Hall workers, a whopping 5, 709 are aged 50 years and above.

Interestingly, 19 employees are still in the county government’s payroll although they are above the retirement age of 60 years.

The report further revealed that only 792 of the employees are below the age of 35, which represents only 14 percent of the entire workforce.

A total of 2, 712 workers are aged between 55 and 59 years; those aged between 50 and 54 years are 2, 978 while another 2, 663 are in the age bracket of between 45 and 49 years.

Those in the ages between 40 and 44 years are 1, 757 while those below the 40-year mark are only 1, 474 where 682 are between 35 and 39 years; 621 are aged between 30 and 34 years while only 171 are below the age of 30.

While releasing the report, City Hall acting County Secretary Leboo Morintat said that more than half of the workforce is made up of females accounting for 6,118 against 5, 485 males.

Mr Morintat said that the total number of employees is only 385 less than the number registered in the payroll in April explaining that the difference can be accounted for.

City Hall’s payroll as of April 2019 indicated that there were 11,988 employees but the report however reduced the figure with only 11,603 having been registered in the exercise concluded four months later. This means that 385 workers were not captured in the biometric registration exercise.

The report, however, indicates that out of the 385 unregistered workers, 200 had retired between the period of April and November this year while another 85 were engaged in training overseas.

GHOST WORKERS

It further indicates that 58 officers were currently serving suspension due to disciplinary cases whereas 23 county employees passed away between April and November 2019.

Another 11 employees had resigned during the period under review.

The Biometric card registration was launched by Governor Mike Sonko in May with the aim of weeding out the ghost workers and eradicating impostors.

The cards are also meant to aid in the public verification of county workers and centralization of employee services through the employee self-service module.

“The system will be able to weed out staff impersonating through the use of biometrics, physical identification card and the SMS verification process. Only the biometrically verified staff will be on the system and should be holders of the high secure identification card,” said Mr Morintat.

The acting County Secretary pointed out that Nairobi residents can now verify the authenticity of city Hall staff by sending a unique identification number issued to every employee, which they will be displaying as part of their uniform, to short code number 40471 where a response message indicating whether the employee is a genuine county staff will be received.

“In case the person being verified is a genuine county staff the reverse SMS will contain his or her biodata and a URL link to his/her digital information complete with his/her picture where one will be able to compare the physical look and the picture on the system,” he said.

But in the case of a person who is not a county employee, the reverse SMS will indicate so.

Member of public have been urged to report such cases through the provided 0725624489 hotline number, contact nearest County Enforcement office or the police.