Nyeri County Governor Mutahi Kahiga has refuted claims that there are 102 rat catchers employed by the county government saying that he was misquoted.
Kahiga who had appeared before the Senate Public Accounts committee to respond on audit queries has said that he was explaining the huge wage bill whereby the counties inherited a huge workforce from the county councils and municipalities.
“Yesterday I was at the Senate to handle some audit queries which are perfectly normal and in the course of addressing the senators, I did say that counties inherited a huge workload and workforce from the previous system of government,” Kahiga said.
He said that he was misquoted on employing 102 rat catchers, noting that there were not more than two rat catchers.
“Whoever was handling the transition ensured that no staff would be sacked and I did say in my payroll I have one or two rat catchers, two meter readers, those are people in our own payroll that we inherited from Nyeri municipal council and we could not send them away, we could not sack them but some other people decided that one or two can become 102 which is not true,”He said.
He said owing to that fact, counties will continue to grapple with the huge workforce.
He said that his government has employed 800 ECDE teachers as there was a shortage which cannot be referred to as recurrent expenditure but development for the county.
“So long as we continue arguing on whether hiring of people in this country is a development issue or a recurrent issue, is a personal emolument, it is neither here nor there. What we need to say as county governors is we hire because there is a need and a service is being provided,” Kahiga noted.
