Three coastal counties are retaining employees above the retirement age with Mombasa County leading with 96 workers who ought to have retired, the Auditor General says in the 2023/24 report.
- The audit found that Mombasa, Lamu and Kilifi were retaining employees past the mandatory retirement age of 60.
- The Public Service Commission (PSC) human resource policy states that public officers should retire at 60 years, or 65 years if they are persons with disabilities.
- Although the overall unemployment in Kenya is at 12.7 percent, Youth (15 – 34 year olds), who form 35 percent of the Kenyan population, have the highest unemployment rate of 67 percent.
“Although the management explained that the officers were on extended contracts and others were living with disabilities, this was not supported with documents on contract extensions and disability certificates,” auditor general says.
A review of the staff register in Kilifi County revealed 26 employees who should have retired were still in the staff register. Four employees in Lamu County who had reached the retirement age but were still serving were paid KSh 3.6 million.
The County said that the officers had been retained due to the rare knowledge, skills and competencies that are scarce, unique and not readily available but did not provide details.
During the period under review, Lamu was also found in breach of the law following non-competitive hiring of interns with 9 pocketing KSh 900,000 from July 2023 to March 2024.
The auditor says, the needs assessment report and requisition from the departments notices, applications, interview report and approval by the county public service board were not provided for audit contrary to Public Service Commission circular.
“The circular provides that holders of at least Bachelor’s Degree from recognised university get an amount of Ksh25,000 per month and Ksh4000 as a daily subsistence allowance whenever the intern is required to undertake official assignment outside the assigned duty station. However, review of Human Resource records indicated that the interns were on the payroll, but they were receiving less monthly stipend than the amount in the circular,” the auditor-general said.
According to Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE), Over one million young people enter into the labour market annually without any skills some having either dropped out of school or completed school and not enrolled in any college.
