Tharaka-Nithi Governor Muthomi Njuki has addressed the issue of suspected ghost workers in the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) workers.
Pressed to substantiate where he came up with the figure of 3,000 ghost workers out of the 8,751 UHC workers currently on the payroll of the Ministry of Health, Njuki said it was a figure of speech.
“Allow me to say that is what we call figurative speech. The essence of this conversation is that the number of UHC workers on record and the ones on duty differ,” Njuki remarked on Tuesday, June 3, 2025.
Clean up payroll
On Monday, June 2, 2025, Njuki had indicated that the unions were opposed to a proposed head count of the UHC workers at the county level, saying there were thousands of ghost workers.
“I heard the unions objecting to the head count, but I want to say that this must be done. We cannot continue paying people that we don’t know, and the only way to conduct a head count for the UHC staff is that we be given the payroll from the Ministry of Health so that we can ascertain that those being paid are the same ones we have here,” Njuki said.
The remarks have been termed as diversionary tactics by the striking UHC staff, who say that the only discrepancy in the payroll was 238.
“The data which was submitted to the Ministry of Health had a discrepancy of around 238 staff in excess of what is in the payroll. Where is Muthomi Njuki getting the 3,000?” Van Asaye, a UHC staff quipped.
Njuki, who chairs the health committee in the Council of Governors, indicated that the head count proposed by the Ministry was necessary to establish the number of UHC workers still in service.
Missing workers
“In our county hospitals at the moment, we have less than 5,000 of those 8,700 who are working. Some of them are on strike, others left, others found jobs somewhere else; and unless we reconcile these figures, we may not have the figures,” Njuki stated.
“When I checked hospitals in Tharaka-Nithi this morning, there were fewer than 100 health workers on duty despite having been given 223,” Njuki noted. “The rest are not there, and the same is with the other counties. If the workers are not in their stations yet, they are being paid, I can equate them to ghost workers.”
The Ministry of Health has proposed the head count, which suggests that the UHC workers protesting in Nairobi should go back to their respective counties and sign against their names.
