There is growing anger inside Kakamega County Government over what workers describe as a collapsing welfare system, delayed salaries and a climate of fear where employees who dare to complain about the rot are allegedly tracked, summoned and intimidated instead of being heard.
What is emerging from inside the county is not just another ordinary staff grievance. It is a picture of a county government that appears to have failed its own workforce on some of the most basic obligations of an employer: paying salaries on time, ensuring workers have access to functional health cover, and creating a working environment where employees can raise legitimate concerns without fear of retaliation. Instead, the complaints now coming out of Kakamega point to a county administration where health insurance is unreliable, salary delays are becoming normal, and workers believe there are internal moles planted in offices to identify and report dissenting voices.
If those allegations are true, then Kakamega is not simply dealing with administrative inefficiency. It is dealing with a dangerous mix of financial neglect, institutional intimidation and a county leadership that seems increasingly detached from the day-to-day suffering of the very workers who keep county services running.
At the centre of the anger is the claim that Kakamega County workers currently have no functional health insurance worth the name. Staff say the county has failed to consistently remit contributions to the Social Health Authority (SHA) since its inception, leaving workers with a cover that exists more on paper than in practice. According to the complaint, SHA has not been paid for a long time and many workers do not even know of anyone who has successfully used it through the county arrangement. In practical terms, this means county employees are carrying health cards that cannot reliably help them when they fall sick, need treatment or seek medical attention for their families.
That alone would be serious enough. But the situation, according to staff, has been made worse by the county’s introduction of M-TIBA as an alternative arrangement that also appears to be unstable and unreliable. Workers say M-TIBA can work for one month, only to be suspended for the next two, making access to treatment a frustrating gamble rather than a guaranteed benefit. In other words, an employee can walk into a hospital not knowing whether the county’s health cover will actually work that day, next week or the following month.
That is not health insurance. That is organised uncertainty.
And the cruelty of that uncertainty cannot be overstated. A county employee who reports to work every day should not have to pray that their employer has remembered to activate or fund their medical cover before they seek treatment. A worker should not have to postpone care, borrow money for medication or avoid hospital altogether because the county government cannot keep its insurance commitments in order. Yet that is the reality workers in Kakamega are now describing: a county government that appears comfortable exposing its own employees to medical vulnerability while senior officials continue with business as usual.
The questions this raises are direct and uncomfortable. If Kakamega County has enrolled workers under SHA, why have remittances allegedly not been made consistently? If M-TIBA was introduced to bridge the gap or provide an alternative, why is it reportedly functional one month and suspended the next? Who approved that arrangement? What exactly are workers supposed to rely on when they need treatment? And how can a county government justify deducting or promising health cover to employees when the same cover allegedly collapses whenever they actually need to use it?
The county leadership cannot pretend this is a technical glitch. Health cover is not a side benefit that workers can do without. It is one of the core protections that any responsible employer should guarantee, especially in a public service environment where employees include health workers, clerical staff, support staff, field officers and other personnel who often operate under demanding and stressful conditions. If that cover has been allowed to break down, then it is not a small payroll inconvenience. It is a direct assault on employee welfare.
And it gets worse.
Alongside the health insurance mess is another complaint that goes to the heart of basic livelihood: salary delays. Workers say the payment of salaries in Kakamega County has become a serious problem under the current administration, with delays now becoming common even though such a situation was never the norm under the previous county government. For staff living from payslip to payslip, delayed salary is not an accounting issue. It is rent unpaid, school fees deferred, loan arrears piling up, food budgets collapsing and households pushed into anxiety for no reason other than the county’s inability or unwillingness to pay workers on time.
A county government that delays salaries while also failing to provide reliable medical cover is not just inconveniencing employees. It is destabilising entire families. Workers cannot plan. They cannot meet obligations. They cannot budget for treatment, transport or basic survival. And once salary delays become normalised, the county effectively transfers the cost of its dysfunction onto workers and their dependants.
This is why the crisis in Kakamega should not be dismissed as one more internal labour complaint. It is a governance issue. It is a leadership issue. It is a question of whether Governor Fernandes Barasa’s administration has lost control of the basic machinery required to run a county government responsibly.
Because none of this happens in a vacuum. The responsibility climbs straight to the top.
Governor Fernandes Barasa is the political head of the county and cannot run away from the condition of workers under his watch. If county employees are saying their SHA cover is effectively dead, their M-TIBA arrangement is erratic and their salaries are increasingly delayed, then that is not just a payroll office problem. It is an indictment of the county’s broader management priorities.
The spotlight also falls on the County Treasury and Finance Department, because salary remittances and insurance payments do not disappear into thin air. Someone controls the disbursement schedules. Someone knows whether SHA remittances have been made. Someone knows why M-TIBA is unstable. Someone knows why salaries are delayed. If county workers are going unpaid on time and their medical cover is failing, then the finance chain must be forced to explain itself.
The County Public Service and Administration Department also cannot escape scrutiny if workers are alleging a hostile work environment where dissent is monitored and punished. A county government is not a private militia. Employees should not have to live in fear that raising legitimate concerns about salaries, medical cover or mismanagement will lead to them being profiled, reported and summoned to “explain” themselves.
Yet that is exactly the culture being described by the whistleblower. According to the complaint, county bosses have allegedly planted their moles in various offices to gather information on workers who question the rot. In that environment, a simple complaint about salary delay or broken health cover is no longer treated as feedback from an employee. It becomes an act of disloyalty to be monitored and punished.
That allegation, if true, is as disturbing as the salary and insurance failures themselves.
Because once a county government reaches the point where employees are afraid to speak openly about non-payment, broken medical cover and internal dysfunction, the institution has crossed from poor administration into active intimidation. It means the administration is no longer trying to solve the problem. It is trying to control the people talking about the problem.
And that is often the clearest sign that the rot is real.
No county worker should need anonymity simply because they want to say their salary is delayed or their health cover is not working. No employee should be summoned to explain themselves because they questioned why SHA has not been remitted or why M-TIBA keeps collapsing. No public servant should have to choose between silence and victimisation simply because they are asking their employer to do the bare minimum.
That is why this matter demands answers not just from one office, but from the entire Kakamega County leadership structure. Governor Fernandes Barasa must explain why county workers say they do not have reliable health insurance and why salary delays are becoming normal. The County Treasury must explain whether SHA remittances have been made, what the current status of M-TIBA is, and why workers are being left in uncertainty. The County Public Service and Administration leadership must explain whether there is any truth to claims that county bosses have planted moles in offices to monitor staff complaints and identify dissenting voices. And if these claims are false, the county should rebut them transparently with facts, remittance records and payroll timelines instead of silence.
Because if the allegations are true, then Kakamega County is not merely failing its workers financially. It is failing them institutionally and morally.
The tragedy is that Kakamega was once spoken of as one of the most promising counties in western Kenya, a county with the size, visibility and political weight to become a regional model of public service delivery. Instead, the picture now being painted by workers is of a county where employees cannot trust their health cover, cannot rely on salaries arriving on time, and cannot even speak freely about those failures without fearing that informants inside the system will report them to the bosses.
That is why the whistleblower’s closing line cuts so sharply: the once jewel of the west is now becoming the joke of the west.
And unless the county leadership addresses these complaints honestly and urgently, that line will only become harder to dispute.
The Complaint from Kakamega County Workers ¶
Kindly hide my identity. There is some serious rot in Kakamega County Government. The workers currently have no functional health insurance. SHA hasn’t been paid for a long time since its inception and I don’t think there is anyone who has ever used it. The county introduced a health insurance called M-TIBA, it works for one month and then gets suspended for two months. It has been very challenging getting treatment.
The unfortunate situation is that the county bosses have planted their moles in various offices to gather information on any dissenting voices. If you comment or complain on any rot, you are summoned to explain. This is the reason my identity should be hidden.
On the other hand, payment of salaries has also become a problem. They delay so much, something that was never a thing in the previous government. The once jewel of the west is now a joke of the west.
Those are not light accusations. They point to a county workforce that feels medically exposed, financially frustrated and professionally intimidated.
If Governor Fernandes Barasa’s administration, the County Treasury, the Public Service Department and the county leadership responsible for staff welfare have a different version of events, then they should put it on record. They should tell Kakamega workers whether SHA remittances have been made, why M-TIBA is reportedly unreliable, why salaries are delayed, and whether employees are indeed being monitored and summoned for speaking out.
But if county workers are right, then the problem in Kakamega is bigger than delayed pay and broken insurance. It is a county government that appears to be failing its employees while trying to silence the very people living through that failure.