Embu County Assembly.
The Embu County government has come under fire for hiring five ship crew workers for the Agriculture, Livestock and Blue Economy departments, despite there being no vessels.
According to a breakdown of the department’s Personnel Emoluments vote-head, five workers under the designation of coxswains and deck masters each earn a monthly basic salary of Sh24,970, allegedly working in non-existent vessels owned by the county government.
Nginda Ward Representative Mr Maurice Macharia who is also the Vice Chairman of the County Assembly Committee on Agriculture wondered what the Ship Crew do to earn their salaries from public coffers, yet there were no known seas or lakes in Embu.
"It is shocking that we have ship crew employees in this county yet we have no ship. We want to know the ships the staff members operate and where they are," said Mr Macharia.
The MCA lamented that senior officials at the Agriculture Department have been complaining of understaffing yet there were officers idling around and being paid without any work to do.
The County Assembly is in the process of receiving proposals from county executives in defence of their proposed spending in the draft Embu County Budget Estimates for the 2025/2026 Financial Year.
Responding to the concerns, Dr Njue Mugendi, the Director for Fisheries, said the officers were inherited from the national government and seconded to serve at the Seven Forks hydroelectric dams. He however confirmed that they do not perform any duties relating to their designations.
Dr Mugendi explained that the workers were currently serving at the Fisheries section in different capacities such as drivers, extension officers and other support services as they await retraining and official conversion of their terms of service to available job descriptions.
Mr John Nyaga, the County Executive Committee member in charge of the docket told MCAs that they had commenced the procedure to match the officers’ titles with their duties.
“The employees were deployed to the seven forks dam but they had no work to do because there are no ships there. That is why they were withdrawn and assigned other duties,” Mr Nyaga said.
The officials could not however explain why it had taken over 10 years for the designation to be completed since the workers were seconded to the county government in 2013.
Earning a basic salary of Sh24,970 each, this means the officers have earned salaries in excess of Sh17.9 million over the past 12 years, without identification of their roles with corresponding salaries.
