Talking of Council employees, back in June of this year an audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers funded by the World Bank to the tune of Sh44 million found that a staggering 4,215 workers on the City Council’s payroll had ‘questionable employment records’, many of whom are ‘ghost workers’.

Of these 4,215 ‘workers’, 15 simply did not exist, 145 were drawing salaries but their names were not on the Council’s official payroll, and 3,026 did not take up an offer of a free medical scheme. A further 494 refused to produce their ID cards and 182 others did not respond at all to the survey.

“I have therefore directed that 15 ghost employees and those who failed to turn up for the exercise be removed from the payroll with immediate effect”, Mr Kisia declared at a press conference. “We will take appropriate action”, he went on.

That only left 4,018 people on the Council’s payroll (if the Forum’s maths is correct) that still had ‘questionable employment records’, that is, that don’t exist or don’t actually do anything for the Council (they just get paid for it). We are not aware of any further ‘appropriate action’ having been taken.

The Forum says, cut the non-existent workforce and the obvious massed fraud it points to, and don’t raise fees for hard pressed drivers and traders.