Devolution was meant to bring services closer to the people, not to entrench payroll excesses and reward impunity.
The latest Auditor General’s reports expose a disturbing pattern across county governments: open defiance of Salaries and Remuneration Commission guidelines, casual disregard for public finance laws and a culture of unchecked hiring that is bleeding counties dry.
When counties spend up to 60 per cent of their revenue on wages, as seen in Machakos, they are not just breaking rules — they are sabotaging development.
Every shilling lost to double payments, illegal allowances and ghostly casual workers is money stolen from clinics without medicine, roads left impassable and young people denied opportunities.
What is most troubling is that these violations are neither new nor hidden. The SRC ceilings are clear. Payroll automation systems exist. Retirement ages are known.
Yet county executives persist with manual payrolls, irregular recruitment and politically convenient staffing decisions, confident that consequences will be minimal. This is not incompetence; it is wilful negligence.
The human cost is real. Overstaffed counties cannot pay suppliers. Bloated wage bills crowd out funding for water, health and agriculture.
Workers themselves are exploited through endless probation, underpayment and lack of statutory remittances, as seen in Wajir. Devolution, in such hands, becomes an engine of inequality rather than equity.
Accountability must now move beyond audit reports gathering dust. Governors, county public service boards and accounting officers named in these findings must be held personally responsible.
Parliament, the SRC and oversight agencies must enforce sanctions, not issue warnings. Automation of payrolls should be mandatory, not optional.
Devolution will only survive if counties remember who they serve. Public money is not private capital. Until wasteful wage bills are tamed, counties will remain well-staffed but poorly governed — and citizens will continue to pay the price.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”—German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898
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