Audit: Thousands of ghost workers earning at universities

Thousands of ghost workers are earning salaries in public universities, an audit report has revealed.

The report by a technical team that was constituted by universities’ management and three unions to determine how Sh10 billion should be shared, revealed a lot of inconsistencies in payrolls of various universities.

Whereas public universities submitted a report indicating that they have about 30,312 staff, the audit revealed that the institutions have 27,798 staff, a variance of 2,513.

The audit, which was carried out between May 22 and June 5 this year, was a comparison of last year’s February staff numbers submitted before and after negotiations for the signing of the collective bargaining agreement.

ASSOCIATION'S MEMBERS

“The raw payroll data submitted during the meeting was compared with the non-analysed payrolls and February 2016 staff data previously submitted before the negotiations to the Ministry of Education,” states the report.

The audit revealed that Universities Staff Academic Union members are 8,294, Kenya Universities Staff Union and Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospital and Allied Workers are 8,211 and 11,292 respectively, totalling 27,798.

“All universities submitted data for which there were variations in February 2016 staff numbers submitted before and after negotiations,” states the report dated June 12.

According to the report, Kenyatta University had the highest variation in staff numbers data, with the payroll data having 417 more declared staff than is the case.

Masinde Muliro and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga universities had fewer staff declared more than is the case.

NOT WITHIN

Errors and inconsistencies revealed by the audit showed that a significant proportion of staff drawing salaries were not within the scales provided in the CBA.

For instance, there were cases where staff were having high salaries that are specific to self, staff having consolidated salaries with no house allowance, staff earning house allowances not aligned to the grade and staff earning basic salaries of higher grades.

“Inconsistency in numbers of staff month by month, for example, very high numbers at one month that drastically reduce in the following month. Most of these inconsistencies were due to linking or typographic mistakes,” it adds.

Some of the challenges the report pointed out included some universities failing to deliver their raw payrolls in time to enable adequate analysis while other universities submitted incomplete payroll information.

It also emerged that some universities were paying their staff house allowances lower than their current grades.