30 top managers sue communications regulator over jobs
Nine directors and 21 assistant directors have moved to court to challenge the declaration of their positions as vacant. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
The nine directors and 21 assistant directors, Monday filed a case through the Communication Workers Union (COWU), to challenge CA board chairman Ben Gituku’s Friday advertisement of their jobs.
The regulator has defended the move as being a requirement of the Constitution, aimed at making the commission an independent institution.
The 30, however, expressed fears that they may be rendered jobless or subjected to pay cuts if the board goes ahead to implement the new structure.
Thirty senior Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) managers have moved to court to challenge the declaration of their positions as vacant in a move the regulator claims is a legal necessity following its transformation from the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK).
The nine directors and 21 assistant directors, Monday filed a case through the Communication Workers Union (COWU), to challenge CA board chairman Ben Gituku’s Friday advertisement of their jobs.
The regulator has defended the move as being a requirement of the Constitution, aimed at making the commission an independent institution.
The 30, however, expressed fears that they may be rendered jobless or subjected to pay cuts if the board goes ahead to implement the new structure.
The nine directors include, Stanley Kibe, radio frequency spectrum, Peris Nkonge, finance and accounting, John Omo, legal services and commission secretary and Matano Ndaro, competition affairs.
Others are Juma Kandie, human resource, Michael Katundu, information, Mutua Muthusi, consumer and public affairs, and Christopher Kimei, licensing compliance and standards.
The new positions will now be filled competitively and will include hiring applicants from outside the authority.
The union has claimed in a suit lodged against CA that the law provides for the regulator to retain any staff that was working for it at the time of the promulgation of the Constitution.
“Notwithstanding that the Kenya Information and Communications Act protected the employment of the employees of CCK, the board purported to summarily render employees in the position of directors and assistant directors vacant by renaming the respondent,” COWU says.
The union holds that the Constitution provides for the retention of the managers who may be forced to re-apply for their jobs.
It further states that the CA has reneged on an internal memo it had sent to its staff that only the positions of the general and chief manager would be advertised externally while those of the 30 senior managers would be done internally.
In the new structure, the board has created a new layer comprising three general managers, technical service, corporate affairs and support services who will be reporting directly to the director-general.
The board has also scrapped the title of directors and the new office bearers of the same position will now be referred to as chief managers and will report to the newly created three general managers instead of the director-general as was the case previously.
“On December 11, CA announced to all staff that it would advertise the positions of general managers and chief managers externally while the positions of senior managers would be advertised internally,” said COWU.
