Why Kisii governor Simba Arati has sacked two mortuary attendants

by Wanja Waweru

Kisii Governor Simba Arati has fired two morgue caretakers who allegedly accepted bribes in exchange for services that were provided without charge at the facility.

The outspoken ruler claimed that the two workers had received payment from the deceased to prepare and clean the remains.

“Can you imagine those two employees you just sent home, who were receiving money to clean the corpses, yet we pay them? They get money from the dead. Who does that? What kind of corruption is this?” he asked.

The county executive also suggested that he fire the morgue staff in response to the public uproar.

And the governor went on to boast that he had replaced the two with some of the best morgue staff in the country.

In addition, he said, the fired workers placed more than 200 bodies in a morgue that could barely hold 72.

Arati, who previously represented Dagoriti in the Nairobi parliament, is not hiring county staff for the first time.

Arati once ordered that all county cars line up across Josei Stadium with each driver parked next to the car he was driving in an effort to relieve congestion from what he believed to be an overworked workforce.

His audit of human resources in the county revealed that, of the 5,600 employees, 1,314 were “ghost workers” who had not turned up in headcount for two months.

In another incident, Arati allocated 10 million shillings from the county supplementary budget to check the academic certificates of all county employees in an effort to get rid of ghost workers.