The taxman interviewed academic failures for revenue service assistant positions it filled last year, in what has exposed more weaknesses in the exercise that has since been quashed by the High Court for being unconstitutional.
This is according to new revelations by Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu showing that, while the minimum requirement for the revenue service assistants (RSAs) was a D+ in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE), the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) still admitted persons who scored below D+ for at least two initial rounds of interviews.
The National Treasury and the Public Service Commission (PSC), while approving KRA requests to recruit revenue service assistants, set the minimum academic qualification for the position as a D+ in KCSE.
“Approval by the National Treasury and PSC were granted and the authority proceeded to recruit 1,406 RSAs who were required to have a minimum grade of D+ and aged below 35 years," Ms Gathungu states in her audit report on the KRA for the 2022/2023 financial year.
“However, a review of the recruitment process revealed that 69 applicants with grades below D+ participated in aptitude test I while 30 applicants with grades below D+ also participated in aptitude test II.
"This casts doubts on whether submitted applications were screened before inviting the candidates to participate in the aptitude tests,” Ms Gathungu’s report goes on to say.
The audit pokes holes into KRA’s internal controls, especially its e-recruitment system that was used for the exercise.
The authority had requested the Treasury and the PSC to give it permission to hire 1,500 revenue service assistants, for which the two bodies approved the hiring of 1,406 of the officials, and KRA proceeded with their recruitment.
The High Court in March, however, nullified the hiring of the 1,406 personnel on the grounds that it was unconstitutional because the recruitment exercise was skewed in favour of candidates from the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities.
Justice William Musyoka ruled that, while the two communities constitute 32 percent of Kenya’s population, they constituted more than half of the people that KRA had hired.
“Going by those (Kenya’s population) statistics, the 56 percent allotted to the two communities appears to be grotesquely disproportionate to what was the due share to them,” Justice Musyoka stated.
The audit further reveals that, by the close of the application deadline, 123,525 Kenyans had applied, though there were thousands who were unqualified for the job.
“Analysis of the raw data list comprising of 127,117 applicants revealed that there were 3,592 unique records which were duplicated thereby overstating the number of applicants by 3,592. The correct number of applicants was therefore, 123,525 applicants,” Ms Gathungu notes.
The audit further notes that, while some 5,577 applicants failed to disclose their age despite the requirement being a key criterion in the application and selection process, KRA irregularly allowed them to progress with the application and selection process.
“The system allowed candidates with incomplete input data to successfully submit their applications.
"Cases were noted where identity numbers keyed in the system contained characters as opposed to numerical numbers, identity numbers were not keyed in during applications, and in some cases the applicants were sharing the same identity numbers.
"The internal employment application forms allowed applicants to submit more than one application,” the audit notes.
The audit notes that the reliability of data in KRA’s current recruitment module may be misleading, though its management has committed to strengthening the control features in the recruitment module.
The audit terms security controls embedded in KRA’s e-recruitment system as “weak” and notes that information obtained from it “cannot be fully relied upon in its entirety.”
