Nairobi — Cabinet has approved comprehensive payroll reforms to tackle long-standing integrity issues in public service payrolls and ensure statutory deductions are uniformly applied at source.

The reforms follow a special audit of the 2024-2025 financial year, which revealed serious governance, integrity, and cybersecurity failures within the Government Human Resource Information System-Kenya (HRIS-K).

The audit exposed widespread payroll anomalies, including mismanagement of identity records, tax compliance issues, and irregular bank accounts.

Of grave concern, 720 system editors altered over 4.7 million payroll records without audit trails, including instances of staff editing their own records.

The audit also flagged financial irregularities, unauthorized payments, excessive salary arrears, weak disaster-recovery measures, and expired ICT licenses, all posing risks to public funds.

In response, the Cabinet approved a reform roadmap that includes mandatory security certification by 11 March 2026, forensic analytics to guide legal and disciplinary actions, a governance reset of HRIS-K, and full integration of a statutory deductions platform to enhance transparency and accountability across government payrolls.