The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is dangling a carrot to individuals who secured employment in public offices using fake credentials.

The agency has promised to drop their cases if they return all the monies they earned in salary through the irregularly acquired positions.

EACC has promised that it will grant amnesty to individuals who come forward to surrender the illegal proceeds since the salaries were drawn from public coffers using fake academic documents.

Public Service Commission audit last month revealed that over 2,000 fake academic and professional certificates were used to secure jobs in government institutions.

The appeal was targeted at public officers in the North Rift, where it has been established that many secured employment in government using fake credentials.

“We have recently realised that there are so many civil servants in this region who have been earning salaries for many years using forged academic papers. We are appealing to those employees to surrender the salaries earned illegally and we are going to forgive them and withdraw cases against them,” said North Rift EACC Regional Manager Japheth Baithalu.

While decrying the high number of employees illegally drawing salaries from public funds, the regional anti-graft boss said EACC is ready to embrace the Alternative Justice System (AJS) to allow suspects to repay the government the monies earned for the period they have been in employment, and they will be forgiven.

A week ago, EACC instructed government agencies not to pay any dues to individuals who have hastily resigned or sought early retirement after being implicated in fake academic papers probe.

The commission's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Twalib Mbarak instructed public institutions both at the county and national government levels to halt any such payments until investigations are complete.

“... our major interest is to reclaim all public resources acquired illegally, because jailing people won’t’ restore the money,” said Mr Baithalu.

He spoke at the Court Users Committee conference hosted by the Centre Against Torture-Kenya Foundation in Eldoret.