The new Kisii County governor Simba Arati met a rude shock on Wednesday after discovering that there was a massive inflation of staff employed by the county.

Arati discovered that the county had employed up to 256 drivers yet there were only 82 running vehicles.

It also emerged that a section of the recruited did not have any designation within the county.

While speaking during a meeting with the county drivers on Wednesday at Agricultural Training College in central Kisii,Arati pledged to investigate the matter to know how these workers found work in the county.

the governor also held meeting in strict privacy with chief officers and committee executives at the Farmers Resource centre where he said his administration will smoke out staff stealing public funds and have them arrested then taken to court to answer to related charges.

Arati said that for a county to be safe, pain must be inflicted and sanity restored.

"For a county to be safe we must inflict pain. We must fight for sanity at all costs, there will be no shortcuts," Arati said.

The governor noted the county had been oozing over Sh6 million to non -assigned staff which could be used to solve other pertinent issues.

"This is the amount of money, if such wastage prevented, could be used to build and equip a dispensary in the village," Arati said.

The governor later put the county’s finance and fleet management staff to explain the matter and said he was ready to take stern measures against officers found culpable to flouting employment rules.

He ordered that all drivers and their vehicles to assemble at the Gusii Stadium on Thursday for a headcount exercise to kick off a broad probe into the irregular employment scandals.

The Kisii governor urged staff to report any injustices in their lines of duty.

"I am going to have my office open so that any staffer can walk in to share one or two jokes with me. I promise that I will not let you down if you give me credible intelligence which can help this County move forward," Arati said.

He noted that there were many ghost workers in the county that he needed to identified and shown the door.

Arati promised he will do everything possible to return sanity to the county.