Antynet Ford
At least 1,800 employees of Nandi County have received sacking letters as Governor Stephen Sang implements a human resource audit that revealed a massive, costly payroll.
Nandi governor Stephen Sang has sacked at least 1800 county employees in a move to cut the county wage bill.
The 1800 received their sacking letters.
The letters seen by The Corporate Watch indicate the workers were irregularly issued with appointment letters and their details were irregularly entered into the county payroll without regard to provisions in Section 66 of the County Governments Act.
“Subsequently, by the powers conferred upon the County Public Service Board by Section 75 of the County Governments Act, 2012, the termination said their letter of appointment is hereby revoked on account of irregularity.” The termination letter read in part.
The letters have sparked anger as some workers have threatened to protest and paralyze the county operations this week.
Sang said he won’t spare even his relatives or friends who may have illegally gotten jobs in the massive payroll scam.
The governor said he would fully implement a human resource audit report, which revealed the rot in the county payroll that caused an increase of workers to more than 5,000.
“I will not cherry-pick which part of the report to implement. We will implement the HR report 100 per cent and I am not going back on this so that we clean up this mess once and for all.” The said.
He said anyone who engaged in criminal acts or illegalities would be dealt with by the law.
“If it’s relatives of the governor, the county executives or anyone else, they will face the full force of the law because criminals are just that, regardless of whoever they are related to.” He added.
The governor said he was the one who called for the HR audit in the county and hence he is the whistleblower on the scam.
Sang said much of the county resources that would have gone to development were held up in a huge wage bill and the current clean-up of the payroll would help to free up the resources and professionalize the public services.
The governor termed as criminal any threats by some of the workers to disrupt county operations next week in protest against the ongoing purge.
He said even though about 1,800 workers had received termination letters, the county still had about 3,200 employees who would remain on duty along with volunteers.
The governor added that anyone with complaints about the entire process should follow procedures to forward their issues but warned them against interfering with county operations.