(Billions lost to ghost workers while citizens beg for basics)
By John Wesley
They say in Siaya, over 380 health workers don’t exist. No clinic recognizes them. No patient meets them. But the county pays them. Salaries vanish from the treasury, but no one’s ever caught sleeping in those beds or walking those halls. These are ghost workers: names on a list, payment in the ledger, absence in every record. This is not accounting error…this is betrayal.
In Homa Bay, the audit unearthed 1,786 ghost workers. Underage, undocumented, untraceable…yet paid. Nearly Ksh.300 million flushed away in salaries to people who never showed up for work. Meanwhile, real teachers go unpaid, real nurses go without protective gear, and children in school sit under weak gutters that leak in rain because “development projects” are abandoned or underfunded.
And in Kisumu? The county had to delay salaries for over 4,000 employees in 2025 just to weed out those who were never real. Payment by cheque, original appointment letters demanded. Some days, families await the money they depend on…only to learn that the “worker” drawing a salary may have never done a day’s work. The county claims it saved some money this way, but what it couldn’t save is the dignity of those wrongly accused, or the trust of those who need assurance their leaders are honest.
These numbers are more than just theft. They are heartbreak. Because for every ghost name, there’s a person: a mother who bought school supplies in hope of a paycheck, a father who walked miles to take a shylock loan, a student whose hostel fee went unpaid. Because for every forged letter, there’s shame, confusion, fear. Because when salaries vanish into thin air, people go without bread.
Why do ghost workers flourish? Because systems are weak. Because oversight is arm’s length. Because appointing someone becomes about connections, not competence. Because payrolls are invisible, appointment records are unverifiable, audits are delayed, prosecutions are rare. Because for every politician promising “transparency,” there is a ghost list kept safe in a drawer so payments continue.
The cost is not just financial. It’s social. It’s dignity. It’s belief in the idea that government is for the people, not for political favors. It’s trust eroded every time a rightful worker is told the system has no record of them. It’s hope deferred, service denied, voices silenced.
We need more than audits. We need public verification of payrolls. We need biometric or digital checks that link payments to living people. We need legal consequences for those who perpetuate fraud. We need the truth to be known, and the stolen money to be returned ; to clinics, to schools, to families waiting.
Because ghost workers aren’t victims. They are evidence. Evidence that devolution, democracy, and good governance are failing if public money can be stolen under our noses. If our leaders cannot ensure that salaries reach the people who sweat for them, then what difference does it make who is elected?
