Story By Dickens Wasonga in Kisumu.
It has now emerged that the 32 people who got jobs at Ahero town council recieved letters of appointments even before the interviews were conducted by the council s finance committee.
32 letters of appointment, copies of which are currently under the custody of the provincial local government officer Nyanza Mr. Isaac Kirui were signed and dispatched to the job applicants by the town clerk Mr Richard Kimanga on the 10th of February this year while the interviews to fill the vacant positons were held on the 25th of February,almost one week after the letters had been posted and those appointed asked to start working immediately.
So irregular was the process that three councillors opposed to the idea chose to write a protest letter to the public service commission,copies of which were copied to the PS ministry of local government and the PLGO,among other relevant government offices in a bid to have the entire process nullified.
According to the PLGO, even after they sat to conduct the interviews,civic leaders sitting in the finance committee at the local authority failed to agree on the matter and the committee could not therefore conclude the process of hiring the said new staff.
Even though the council which is currently reeling under debts amounting to millions of shillings had been allowed to hire only 8 new staff by the ministry, it went ahead to recruit 35 people through a process that was bogged down by irregularities.
The council has not paid salaries to its staff for nine months now but the clerk went ahead to hire additional 35 staff to add on to the existing 60 employees.how will the council manage to pay the huge wage bill that will come as a result of the recruitment? asked the PLGO.
He said the ministry was considering taking disciplinary action against the town clerk because he not only defied the ministry’s directive to hire only 8 new staff but also presided over a process which was openly irregular.
He said already the clerk has recieved a letter from the PS nullifying the recruitment awaiting further disciplinary actions by the ministry.
He disclosed that some of the applicants who recieved the appointment letters were claiming that money also exchanged hands.
Kirui said the clerk also promoted some of the staffs at the council with some claiming they parted with bribes to be considered.
These are issues that we are investigating and soon you will see heads rolling, he added.
The provincial boss said as far as he was concerned all the appointment letters given to the applicants were fake because they were issued even before any interviews were carried out.
Efforts to reach the embattled clerk remained futile as his mobile phone remained switched off.
The council chairman councillor Joel Oron however tried to defend the Clerk claiming that they did not hire more than the number of people they were allowed to recruit by the ministry apart from giving consideration to casuals.
“We did employ only casuals since we needed cleaners and enforcement officers who were lacking.those claiming that we have exceeded the number by the ministry are being malicious. They are my rivals whom I ousted during the elections of chairmen last year. They are not happy with what we have done at the council since we took over”, said cllr.Oron.
But the chairman did not know that this writer had not only seen all the copies of appointment letters issued to those who had been considered for the jobs but also had the very copies in his possession.
According to the PLGO the council had sought to fill the position of a town engineer, Social Development officer, a computor programmer, a physical planner and the administrative officer among other vacancies, all totalling 8 positions and they got the ministry’s green light.
ENDS.
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