Ksh67.9 billion was lost by the government to undeserving pensioners in the 2012/13 to 2016/17 financial years, auditor general Edward Ouko has revealed.
In a report tabled in parliament last week, Ouko says that the fake beneficiaries took advantage of loopholes at the Payment Management Information System (PMIS).
In the spun of five years, a total of Ksh200 billion was used to pay pensioners from the Consolidated Funds.
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The cases involves payment of pensions to officers who were not on permanent and pensionable employment while others were paid in lump sum before their retirement dates.
Ouko, in the report, reveals that Ksh44 billion was paid to 82,972 claimants with irregular KRA pins while 7,166 civil servants were paid using irregular ID numbers.
Ksh492 million was disbursed to 196 ineligible officers while Ksh556 million was paid to 349 officers irregularly enrolled in the system.
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117 claimants were paid Ksh26.9 million despite being enrolled on dates beyond 2018, some beyond 2022 and 2099.
Ksh1.6 billion was paid in lump sum to 962 officers before their exit from public service. Ksh152 million was paid to 232 claimants with shared ID numbers while Ksh20 billion was paid to claimants with shared bank accounts.
He further warned that if the issue is not addressed urgently, the state could lose Ksh86.8 billion in the 2019/2020 fiscal year. The amount entails entries for 146,027 claimants supposed to receive each Ksh595,000.
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The loopholes that led to the losses have been attributed to conflict of interest, deliberate wrongful acts which are as a result of lack of separation of roles undertaken by the PMIS database, system programmer, networking and security administrators.
“Segregation of roles would help in detection of control failures which include security breaches, information theft and circumvention of security controls,” the report reads in part.
This comes at a time when genuine claimants are decrying delay of their dues, despite the government having increased the amounts.
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